Geology and a world-wide flood (or not)

 I am not a geologist, but a recent article, written by a geologist, presents abundant geological evidence that the arrangement of rocks and fossils does not support the Young-Earth Creationist belief in a world-wide flood.

Thanks for reading.

What did the animals on Noah's Ark look like?

An article published by Answers in Genesis complains about illustrations of the animals on Noah's Ark, often found in children's books, and elsewhere. (It complains about other things, but I'll try to stick to a discussion of what the animals on the ark looked like.)

Here is a quotation from the article:

Zebras, Clydesdales, and donkeys are all part of the horse kind and came to look like they do today since the Flood as part of the one horse kind. Species and the biblical kind are not necessarily the same things. The original horse kind likely had features resembling each of these. They diversified into what we have today through natural selection in the wild and artificial selection for man’s benefit. The same is true with the cat kind. Domestic cats, lions, bobcats, tigers, and so on, are all varieties in the one cat kind that have developed through variation since the Flood. It is better to draw generic representatives of each kind ...

Let's re-state that section of the article. The author, speaking for Answers in Genesis (AiG), claims that the animals on the Ark did not look a lot like the animals of today. Why is that claim made? The main reasons are that AiG believes that there was a world-wide flood, about 2348 BC, and that all land animals descended from creatures that were rescued on the Ark. AiG also believes that there would not have been room for each species of animal (and food needed to keep them alive) on that vessel, so that there were, instead, founders of each kind, which, since the Flood, diversified rapidly into the multitude of species that live on earth now. (Apparently this sort of belief has not been around for very long in AiG circles, but it is strongly held now.) In other words, the quotation says, there were no tigers or lions, etc., on the Ark, just a pair of cat family ancestors - generic representatives. So how did approximately 40 living species of cats come about? (And some additional extinct ones -- AiG belief is that extinct animals became extinct after the Flood.) AiG's answer is that there was rapid evolution (although they seldom use that word) after the Flood, and that all of these, living and extinct, are descendants of the pair of cat ancestors that were on the Ark. AiG thinks that distinguishing features didn't arise until after the animals came off of the ark -- the cat ancestors probably didn't have stripes, a mane, spots, cheetah-like speed, the ability to climb trees, and other features now found in one or a few species of the cat family, but not the entire family.

Another AiG source says this: "Recent studies estimate the total number of living and extinct kinds of land animals and flying creatures to be about 1,500. With our “worst-case” scenario approach to calculating the number of animals on the Ark, this would mean that Noah cared for approximately 7,000 animals." [pairs or sevens of each kind]

That seems like a lot, but according to my calculations, there are over 31,000 species of animals alive on earth today, to say nothing of extinct ones. That would mean that each of the kinds on the Ark would, on average, have diversified into about 20 species each, all within less than 4600 years.

That's preposterous, of course. Such rapid and extensive speciation, in vertebrates, has not been observed. Biologists generally believe that new species can't develop unless isolated from others in the same line in some way, either by being geographically separated, by mating at different times, or other behavioral differences, or by hybrid sterility. Cave art does not seem to indicate that early humans saw animals that were substantially different than those we see today. Although the Bible does not describe vertebrate animals in any detail, the behavior described (lions as predators, for example) does not suggest that lions, in Bible times, were much, if any, different from those that live today. Samson and David had interactions with lions. Jacob's blessing on his son Judah includes this: Genesis 49:9 "Judah is a lion’s cub. From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down, he crouched as a lion, as a lioness. Who will rouse him up?" Jacob died in about 2000 BC. Samson lived at about 100 years before David, who lived at about 1000 BC. (For my post, indicating all the mentions of lions in the Bible, see here.) As I indicated, the Bible does not describe animals definitively, but it sounds like, by the time of Jacob, as well as Samson and David, lions were like those alive today. If they hyperevolved somehow, from an ancestral cat type, this would have happened in less than 400 years, using AiG's timeline.

It seems to me that it makes a lot more sense to suppose that the Flood was not world-wide, and that cats, and other animals, diverged over a much longer period of time.

For an expanded discussion of these ideas, see my post here.

It seems to me that it's OK to put lions, tigers, bears, donkeys, giraffes, etc., in illustrations of Noah's Ark. We don't really know if there was a world-wide Flood, and the proposal that children's Bible story art be based on unproven, even false, ideas is dangerous.

Sidelight 1: By the time of Zechariah, about 500 BC, horses, mules and donkeys must have diverged, although, even today, they haven't completely diverged, as mules are the offspring of a donkey-horse mating. According to AiG, that divergence took place after the ark. According to all sorts of other evidence, it took place over a much longer time.

Zechariah 14:15 "So will be the plague of the horse, of the mule, of the camel, and of the donkey, and of all the animals that will be in those camps, as that plague." The Masoretic Text uses three different names for the members of the horse family named in this verse, indicating that there were three different animals, all horse-like. (The King James uses "ass" instead of donkey.) The use of these words goes back way before Zachariah -- for example, Pharaoh's army included horse-drawn chariots.

Sidelight 2: The author of the quotation at the beginning of this post, and AiG, should be commended for at least one thing. The author says that artists often portray Adam and Eve as white, or white, blue-eyed blondes, and states that this is most likely not the way that they really looked.

Thanks for reading.

*Added November 6, 2023: The article from AiG also includes this complaint (and over a dozen others): "Not including dinosaurs and pterodactyls (e.g., dragons) on the Ark"

Were land-dwelling vertebrates the only organisms preserved on the Ark?

Genesis gives the impression that the animals preserved from the Flood of Noah's time were mostly, or entirely, land vertebrates -- mammals, birds, and land-living reptiles and amphibians, although it doesn't explicitly say this:
Genesis 7:1 Yahweh said to Noah, “Come with all of your household into the ship, for I have seen your righteousness before me in this generation. 7:2 You shall take seven pairs of every clean animal with you, the male and his female. Of the animals that are not clean, take two, the male and his female. 7:3 Also of the birds of the sky, seven and seven, male and female, to keep seed alive on the surface of all the earth. 7:4 In seven days, I will cause it to rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. Every living thing that I have made, I will destroy from the surface of the ground.” (World English Bible, public domain)

Leviticus 11:20 “‘All flying insects that walk on all fours are an abomination to you. 21 Yet you may eat these: of all winged creeping things that go on all fours, which have legs above their feet, with which to hop on the earth. 22 Even of these you may eat: any kind of locust, any kind of katydid, any kind of cricket, and any kind of grasshopper. 23 But all winged creeping things which have four feet, are an abomination to you.
This passage from Leviticus may indicate that Arthropods (insects, spiders, and more) were classified, by God, as clean or unclean, just as mammals and birds are. That doesn't prove that, say, butterflies and centipedes were on the Ark, but it is possible.

Some questions come to mind. (In 2007, I posted a series of questions about Noah's Flood. There is some repetition with the previous post in the current one, but the two are significantly different.) The questions here are related to the variety and care of the animals on the Ark.

1) Does the Bible really describe a world-wide flood? Others have considered this, and there are plenty of opinions available, so I won't attempt to answer this, except to say that there seem to be these possibilities:
a) there was a world-wide flood.
b) there was a localized flood, but it was experienced by ancestral humans, who thought it was world-wide, or described it as if it were. (perhaps they were living in a large basin, which became the Mediterranean Sea after the flood.) See here for a discussion by theologians who believe that there was an important flood, but that it was not actually world-wide. Here is a discussion of the literary genre of Genesis 1-11. At least some important early theologians did not take Genesis 1-11 to be strictly historical.
c) The entire story of Noah and the Flood is a parable, or just a story, in the Bible to emphasize the dangers of evil living, and God's care for His creation.

Added May 19, 2020:
Here's a post from a Christian geologist who believes that there really was a flood in Noah's time, but does not believe that the Bible really teaches that it was world-wide. He also does not believe that that flood was responsible for as many geological phenomena as many Young-Earth creationists claim that it was.

2) If there was a world-wide flood, how did animals from, say, New Guinea, get to the Middle East, in order to get in the Ark, and, if they did, how did they get back to their origin, without leaving evidence of their passing through, including offspring and fossils, behind them? Joel Duff has considered this question in depth for armadillos and their relatives.
3) How were pairs of unclean animals selected? I have done some bird sexing, and, although, in many cases, it is easy to distinguish males from females, in some cases, it isn't, and the same would be true of many reptiles and amphibians, and even some mammals. Did the animals come marching, or slithering, or hopping, or flying, into the Ark in pairs by Divine impulse of some kind? Genesis seems to indicate that Noah was to do the selecting. {"you shall take with you")
4) Some mammals, such as anteaters, have insects as their diet. Was it necessary to have not just a pair, but, say, an entire termite nest, on the Ark, for the feeding of such mammals? That would be far more than a pair, or seven, of termites.
5) Some bees, ants, some wasps, termites, mole rats, and other animals are eusocial. Would a pair, or seven of these, be able to survive? For example, honeybees would presumably need a queen, a drone, and workers of more than one type.
6) Many animals eat living, fresh plant material, such as pollen, nectar, leaves, or fruit. Would the Ark have needed a bamboo grove for giant pandas, or a field of flowering plants for bees and butterflies? Living plants require sunlight for photosynthesis, leading to growth. Would the ark have had provision for lighted plants? The diets of some animals (like pandas) is restricted to a single type, or very few plants, and it is difficult to see how conditions on the ark could have been able to support all of the different types of plants needed by the variety of animals. Answers in Genesis has considered these questions. Basically, their claim is that the animals on the ark were not specialized as to diet.
7) Many salt-water organisms don't do well if suddenly immersed in fresh water, or are unable to survive in fresh water at all. The reverse is also true. (See here.) Presumably the flood, if there was a world-wide one, was of fresh water. Either the oceans of Noah's day were fresh, or marine organisms of that time were much better able to survive sudden immersion in fresh water than most current organisms.
8) How could there have been room for all the types of animals? Answers in Genesis has considered that question, and their belief is that there were less than 150 types of animals on the Ark, and that all of the variety of land animals now in existence evolved (although they don't use that word much) from these. I find such a proposal impossible to believe. (So do others!) There's no fossil, traditional or artistic evidence for such rapid changes and diversification in animal form and behavior -- lions seem to have been lions for at least the past few thousand years for example. If this rapid evolution occurred after the Ark landed, why didn't it occur between Adam's time and Noah's, so that there would have been much more than 150 kinds by Noah's time? See here for a fuller discussion.
9) If there was a world-wide flood, how were land-living invertebrates, such as snails, insects, centipedes, spiders, annelid worms, and more, stored, fed, and protected? (See question 6, above.)
10) If there was a world-wide flood, why is there little or no geological evidence for this?

Thanks for reading.

Young-earth creationism and the kinds of animals

Genesis 1:20 God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of sky.” 1:21 God created the large sea creatures, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. God saw that it was good. 1:22 God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 1:23 There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
1:24 God said, “Let the earth produce living creatures after their kind, livestock, creeping things, and animals of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. 1:25 God made the animals of the earth after their kind, and the livestock after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. God saw that it was good. 

7:1 Yahweh said to Noah, “Come with all of your household into the ship, for I have seen your righteousness before me in this generation. 7:2 You shall take seven pairs of every clean animal with you, the male and his female. Of the animals that are not clean, take two, the male and his female. 7:3 Also of the birds of the sky, seven and seven, male and female, to keep seed alive on the surface of all the earth. 7:4 In seven days, I will cause it to rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights. Every living thing that I have made, I will destroy from the surface of the ground.”
7:5 Noah did everything that Yahweh commanded him. (World English Bible, public domain.)

Young-earth creationists, of which Answers in Genesis is the most prominent organization, believe that there was a world-wide flood, occurring about 2348 BC, and that the land animals, including land-based birds, have all descended from the animals that Noah and his family had in the ark with them.

Saving all of the animals causes what seems to be an insurmountable problem for young-earth creationists. How did all of these creatures fit on the ark, and how was it possible to feed them? The answer, from Answers in Genesis, is that there were about 137 kinds of animals, and all of the types we have today descended from them. (This doesn't include insects -- at least some young-earth creationists believe that they weren't taken on the ark. Another estimate from Answers in Genesis is that there were about 1500 kinds of animals on the ark. I'm not clear on why the difference, although the larger estimate is said to have included "flying creatures." Perhaps the lower estimate doesn't include them.) It is doubtful that the Genesis word usually translated "kind" corresponds to any of the categories used by today's taxonomists. Young-earth creationists do not claim that it does.

How many species of animals are there now?
This source, citing an authoritative textbook, says that there are currently 5,416 species of mammals on earth. (This presumably includes water-living mammals, which, according to young-earth creationists, were mostly or entirely not found on the ark. The Answers in Genesis belief is that extinct animals from ancient times, such as the saber-toothed tiger, would have descended from animals on the ark, too.)

This source indicates that, until recently, it was thought that there were 9,000-10,000 species of birds, but that this number is an underestimate, and that there are perhaps twice that many. This source indicates that there are about 7,000 species of amphibians. This source indicates that there are about 10,793 species of reptiles. (This research article proposes that there were 11 kinds of turtle on the ark, which have given rise to 313 living species, and 3 kinds of alligator/crocodile, giving rise to 25 current species.) Using 9,000 as the number of species of birds, and 4,800 as the number of species of land mammals, there are about 31,500 species of birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles now on earth. There have been some extinctions within recorded history -- dodos, moas, the marsupial tiger, dinosaurs -- yes, Answers in Genesis proposes that dinosaur kinds were on the ark -- and others, which would add to the number of species that must be accounted for. Young-earth creationists believe that no more than about 1,500 kinds of animals became 31,500, or more, species, within the last 4,366 years. That means that, on average, each of those 1,500 kinds evolved into 21 species over that period, and that number is probably an underestimate. That's an astounding claim!

Here's a brief statement of the Answers in Genesis position, with a diagram of part of the "cat kind." The diagram indicates that the cat kind of animals, on the ark, evolved into lions, house cats, jaguars and cheetahs. (And, presumably, servals, ocelots, leopards, tigers, including saber tooth tigers, and more.)

R. Joel Duff has written about these beliefs of young-earth creationists, and finds them wanting, for a number of reasons. Some of my criticisms, listed below, are derived from his article:

1) Answers in Genesis, which rejects evolutionary mechanisms for the origin of large groups of organisms, over long periods of time, wants us to believe that evolutionary mechanisms are responsible for an astounding unfolding of many species, over a few thousand years. Answers in Genesis does not say "evolutionary mechanisms" much, or at all, but they are really relying on natural selection for the unfolding of species from ancestral kinds.
2) One criticism of main-stream evolutionary thought, by young-earth creationists, is that some fossil links are missing. But there are no known fossils, from the last 4,366 years, of any of the proposed species explosions after the Ark landed. Furthermore, cave art doesn't show such transitional forms. They are missing!
3) The Bible seems to describe lions, and other animals of Bible times, as if they looked and acted as they do today. Samson encountered a lion in about 1,100 BC, so the cat kind, according to Answers in Genesis, would have diversified to about what it is today in a mere 1,300 years or so. Is that possible? If it is, why haven't animals continued to expand the number of species up until the present day, or why did evolution stop at lions, 3,000 or so years ago, and not continue cat diversification?
4) There is no observational evidence from ancient literature for this explosive diversification.
5) Duff points out that scientific reasoning persuaded Answers in Genesis that there was not room in the Ark for all of the species we now have. The idea of rapid speciation after the flood is a new idea, not one that ancient Biblical scholars got from the text of Genesis. It has come about mostly, or entirely, because of the realization, by young-earth creationists, that it would have been impossible for Noah's family to house, feed, and clean up after 30,000 or so animal species within the dimensions of the Ark. In other words, young-earth creationists, who often accuse Christians of other persuasions about origins, that they are putting science ahead of a plain reading of the Bible, are in fact doing exactly that. See here.
6) This is a matter of culture and esthetics, I guess, rather than a logical objection, but what would Answers in Genesis have us do with all the Bible story picture books that show giraffes, zebras, lions, tigers and other animals, either with Adam and Eve in Eden, or on the Ark with Noah? Do they want us to replace these with pictures of their own inventions, the ancestors of the kinds? (Added June 8, 2022: The answer is "yes." see here for an AiG statement on this subject.)
7) Are we to believe that the names Adam gave to the animals would shortly be outdated, because of rapid evolutionary processes? (In most of the Old Testament, including Genesis, the names of people were chosen carefully, and matched the person's perceived character. Adam may have done that in naming the animals.)
8) Dogs have been artificially selected for thousands of years, but they are still dogs. Why, then, should we believe that natural selection would bring about an explosion of many species from an ancestral dog kind, in a few thousand years?
9) If hyperevolution was responsible for turning 137, 1500, or some other relatively small number of species (or kinds) into over 30,000 after the Ark landed, wouldn't it also have been responsible for rapid diversification before the Flood? If that had happened, wouldn't it have multiplied the kinds considerably?

Thanks for reading. For a chart showing many of the strengths and weaknesses of several views of origins held by Christians, see here. (All views of origins have weaknesses -- young-earth creationism isn't the only one that does!) For "What's wrong with young-earth creationism?" see here. For evidence that at least one of the important Bible scholars of the past, St. Augustine, did not necessarily believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, see here.

Addendum, September 5, 2018: the Naturalis Historia blog discusses the idea that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, and points out several problems with that idea. 

October 26, 2018: I recently saw a post on the Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham debate, held in 2014, on the Gospel and Evolution blog. The reaction to the debate is of considerable interest, but this statement is especially pertinent to the subject of the post you are reading: "Ken Ham didn’t seem to have a problem at all with a 1,000 or so 'kinds' undergoing speciation since his alleged global flood 4,000 years ago to become the millions of species alive on the earth today, not to mention the billions that have lived and become extinct."

Thanks for reading.

Added November 30, 2018: A post by Naturalist Historia (R. Joel Duff's blog) discusses the adoption of evolutionary mechanisms in the explanations given by Answers in Genesis. 

Added December 31, 2018: David Heddle, of "He Lives" also writes about the problem that the large number of species raises for Mr. Ham and his followers. 

Added January 18, 2019: Naturalis Historia discusses horses, and related species, and examines what the Bible says about horses, and concludes that it's not possible for all horse types (including extinct ones) to have come from a single pair. 

Added March 5, 2019: R. Joel Duff has analyzed articles by adherents of Answers in Genesis, and, again, finds the hyper-evolution thesis to be spectacularly unbelievable. (In fact, Duff quotes one AiG author, who states that ordinary evolutionary processes could not have been responsible for the amazing number of bird species of the finch kind, if they all descended from one kind, after the Flood.) Here's one of Duff's articles. It has links to an AiG related publication.

July 18, 2019. This blog post was edited somewhat, including the addition of criticism 9.

August 20, 2019. See this post for more on the subject.

May 19, 2020. For more on proposed rapid speciation, from AiG and other Young-Earth Creationists, see here.

May 26, 2020. An article, published in Answers Research Journal, an organ of Answers in Genesis, and authored by important YEC scientists, says this: "In short, the YEC model proposes significant amounts of morphological change in a window of time that, by comparison with evolution, is extremely short."

July 18, 2022: Todd C. Wood, a young-earth creationist with solid science credentials, reacts to some who are calling Ken Ham, head of Answers in Genesis, an evolutionist. He is sometimes called that because of his belief in hyperevolution.

Noah's ark - attempts to build replicas

National Public radio has posted a report on several attempts, some completed, some ongoing, to construct full-scale, or scale models, of Noah's ark. These are in at least three continents, and there is, or has been, more than one attempt in the U. S. I find the report fascinating. There are photos, and links to related matters.

One thing especially caught my eye. It is this, quoting one of the persons leading a replica attempt: "Not only are we thinking through the different kinds of animals represented onboard and how you deal with 12 million tons of waste every day . . ." Twelve million tons? A day? I have trouble imagining how and where that figure came from, if, indeed, the quotation is accurate.

The persons building the ark say that, according to the Bible, the ark was 300 by 50 by 30 cubits. (See Genesis 6) Let's say that a cubit is two feet, which is almost certainly an overestimate, and assume that the shape of the ark was a rectangular prism, that is, that it wasn't pointed on one end, and that the bottom was the same size as the top. Using those assumptions, the volume of the ark would be 300 x 2 x 50 x 2 x 30 x 2 = 3,600,000 cubic feet. If one-quarter of that volume was animals (which would mean that they were very closely packed -- don't forget that there would have had to have been food enough to be turned into waste, and that amount of food would have taken up a lot of room, plus air to breathe, cages, etc.), then there would have been 900,000 cubic feet of animals on the ark. I take that to be generous, for sure. But anyway. A cubic foot contains about 7.5 gallons, so I'll say 8. A gallon of water, and animals are about as dense as water -- most float, or at least don't sink easily -- weighs about 8 pounds. 900,000 x 8 x 8 = somewhat less than 58,000,000 pounds of animals. That's 29,000 tons. There's no way that 29,000 tons of animals could generate twelve million tons of waste per day. Either NPR has misquoted the individual, or the individual hasn't been thinking very carefully.

Here's information on claims that Noah's ark has been found. Here's a post on some questions about the flood.

Thanks for reading.

Has Noah's Ark been found? part 2

Yesterday, I posted about a recent claim that Noah's Ark has been found, and, based on the evaluation of this claim by scientists from Answers in Genesis, a strongly Young-Earth Creationist organization, indicated that that claim is false.

Answers in Genesis is an organization that is fully convinced that the earth is only a few thousand years old, that there was a world-wide flood, and that God did, indeed, cause a large variety of creatures to escape this flood on the ark that was built by Noah and his family. The organization would be very pleased if Noah's ark were to be found. However, they are also opposed to dubious claims of the discovery of the ark, as they put Christianity in a bad light. AiG says that since the Bible says there was an ark, that's all the reason needed to believe it. AiG also says (correctly) that the Bible does not indicate the exact mountain where the ark came to rest, but gives a region for that event -- see my previous post for more information. They also suppose that it is likely that Noah's family would have used the wood from the ark for construction, tools, and fuel, so that most or all of it would have long since disappeared.

An older claim, beginning with a photograph taken from the air in 1960, and pursued during the 1990's, has been made by an organization named Ark Discovery, International. This organization is led by Ron Wyatt, and claims to have artifactual evidence of the Red Sea Crossing, made by Moses and the Israelites, in Exodus, and to have located Mt. Sinai, and to have made discoveries of geological evidence of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Some or all of these claims have been disputed, but I won't discuss those areas.

One claim of ADI is that they have found "anchor stones" in Turkey, and that these stones were attached to the ark to stabilize it. (A better term is drogue stones.) That is possible, I suppose, although the Bible does not mention such objects as part of the structure of the ark, nor does it mention the large wooden keelsons to which they were supposedly attached. 

According to the Wikipedia, Wyatt's claim of having found drogue stones that were once attached to the ark is dubious, at best. A former co-worker of Wyatt's came to believe that they were local in origin, based on his geological findings. (Although he may have changed his mind again on that, shortly before he died.) The co-worker, at first, argued that the stones found a few miles from the supposed site of the ark were drogue stones, because they are mentioned in the epic of Gilgamesh, which contains another flood story from ancient times.

According to the Wikipedia, and also indicated by ADI's own web site, Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research, both prominent Young-Earth Creationist organizations, have dismissed the claims of ADI. (ADI has responded -- see the first link in this paragraph.) I do not consider myself qualified to referee such claims and counter-claims, but believe that the Bible does not need such claims to defend it. I take it that the claims of ADI are most likely false, although perhaps they were made made with the best of motives.

Thanks for reading.

Has Noah's Ark been found?

The Bible tells us about Noah's Ark, a giant structure which, according to the Biblical narrative, carried a few of each of many kinds of animals, while the earth was flooded. Every few years, there are claims that the remains of the ark have been located. I have heard such stories for at least a few decades.

Answers in Genesis is an organization that is fully convinced that the earth is only a few thousand years old, that there was a world-wide flood, and that God did, indeed, cause a large variety of creatures to escape this flood on the ark that was built by Noah and his family. The organization would be very pleased if Noah's ark were to be found. Members of that organization have examined a recent claim that the ark has been found, and are not convinced of the validity of such claims.

Here is a technical article published by Answers in Genesis, in November, 2011. The article, by Andrew Snelling, who seems to have considerable expertise in radioactive dating (I have no such expertise). He concludes that wood samples taken, supposedly, from a structure found in Turkey by a team from Hong Kong are not ancient, but modern. The wood tested was living during the 20th century, according to Snelling. Snelling was, he says, given access to the actual wood testing data, and he presents it in the article. I don't claim to understand the technical details in Snelling's discussion, but the conclusion he reaches is plain: "Given the present C-14 evidence, despite the tantalizing wooden remains the Chinese-Turkish team claims to have discovered on Mt. Ararat, such artifacts CANNOT have come from the Ark. So whatever they have found, they are NOT the remains of the Ark." (Emphasis in original.)

Here is a less technical news article, published by Answers in Genesis in May, 2010, about the same supposed discovery, which indicates that the organization doubts the claim, and questions whether the Ark would be expected to ever be found. The reasons given for such doubts include volcanic activity in the region where the ark is believed to have landed, and the likelihood that Noah and his family would have used the wood from the ark for other purposes.

Answers in Genesis takes the position that what the Bible says about the flood, and the ark, is sufficient. If the ark were to actually be discovered, that would be great, but we don't need such a discovery to believe in the Bible. As far as I can determine, the organization hasn't evaluated any claims of finding the ark since the claim made by the group from Hong Kong in 2010, discussed in this post. I am sure that if any important claims of finding the ark had been made since that time, they would have discussed them in short order.

The organization also points out that the Bible is vague about the location where the ark came to rest, saying, in Genesis 8:4, "the mountains of Ararat," rather than on a specific mountain. See here for that verse, in several versions of the Bible, which are unanimous on that point. The Wikipedia article on those mountains says: "The 'Mountains of Ararat' in Genesis clearly refer to a general region, not a specific mountain . . ."

Tomorrow, I expect, God willing, to post about another alleged finding of Noah's Ark.

In a previous post, I have set forth a number of questions about the story of the flood, which I can't answer satisfactorily. 

In the next post, I consider an older claim that the ark has been found.

Thanks for reading.

Tapeworms before the Flood? Scientific evidence for that

Todd C. Wood is a firm believer in Young-Earth Creationism. Unlike some Young-Earth Creationists, he is familiar with the scientific literature, and accepts most of it. He also engages with scientists who do not believe like he does.

In a recent post, Wood comments on a report that indicates that there were tapeworm eggs in fossilized shark dung. (Tapeworms are commonly passed on by eggs in dung, which is eaten, accidentally or on purpose. Fossilized dung is fairly common. Such fossils are called coprolites.)

Wood doesn't argue about it, but he does not accept the date of approximately 270 million years ago for the fossil. He believes that this fossil was formed during the flood. Either way, the fossil indicates that tapeworms existed before the flood. If the date given is correct, they must have existed, not only before the flood, but before the Fall. 

If they did, as the evidence indicates, then their must have been parasites before the Fall. This, as Wood well knows, would raise some interesting questions for Young-Earth Creationists. (There are other kinds of Creationists. See here for an example.)

In this post, I speculate on dung, and also about organisms that probably existed before the Fall, such as bacteria and mosquitoes.

Thanks for reading. Read Wood.

Did animals eat meat before the flood?

Young-earth creationist Todd Wood thinks so, and he cites a paper in a young-earth creationism journal to back up his claim. I found the claim that animals did eat meat before the flood remarkable. Genesis 9, after the flood, states that humans were free to eat meat, but Genesis 1 seems to indicate that, at least prior to the fall, we were not to do so. (The article I have linked to below has more on what Genesis says about this issue.)

I am writing this in late 2011, and I can see this article here, in the January 2011 issue of this journal, although there are warnings that only members can see it before 2012. (This practice of restricting immediate access is fairly common, not unique to Creation Matters.)

Thanks for reading. I have a post, here, on the subject of whether Christians are required to be vegetarians.

Did it rain before the Flood?

These passages are the first mention of rain in the Bible:
Genesis 2:5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, 6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— 7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (All Bible quotation from the ESV, unless otherwise noted. ESV copyright and usage information, see here.)

Genesis 7:4 For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.”

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

Is, then, Genesis 7:12 the first rainfall in the history of the earth? The passage doesn't say that. However, it may imply that. And, of course, Genesis 2:5 says that it hadn't rained yet, at the time Genesis 2 is describing. But I don't think that the rain that fell in Noah's time was the first rain ever, and, as you'll see if you read on, I'm in good company.

First, a little bit on the words used. The word for rain, in Hebrew, in Genesis 2:5 (see here) is a verb. It is used at least as often when God sends something besides water from the sky, as it is for what we commonly think of as rain. The same word is used in Genesis 7:4. Genesis 7:12 uses a different word, a noun. (See here.)

Now, to public domain commentaries, written by renowned Bible scholars. John Calvin does not consider the question of whether the rain that fell in Genesis 7 was the first rain that ever fell. Neither does John Wesley, not Matthew Henry, nor the commentary of Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown.

Matthew Henry does not consider the question of whether there had been a rainbow before the flood. (Genesis 9) Wesley believes that there had been: "The rainbow, 'tis likely was seen in the clouds before, but was never a seal of the covenant 'till now." The Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown commentary seems to agree with Wesley: "This common and familiar phenomenon being made the pledge of peace, its appearance when showers began to fall would be welcomed with the liveliest feelings of joy." Calvin not only agrees, but ridicules those who have claimed that there were no rainbows before the Flood: "From these words certain eminent theologians have been induced to deny, that there was any rainbow before the deluge: which is frivolous. For the words of Moses do not signify, that a bow was then formed which did not previously exist; but that a mark was engraven upon it, which should give a sign of the divine favor towards men."

Thus, even though these four commentaries are silent on the direct question of whether the rain that came in the time of Noah was the first rain, three of them answer it indirectly -- the rainbow mentioned as the pledge of God's promise not to destroy the earth by a flood was not the first rainbow, in their opinion. And, since a rainbow requires rain, a belief that it had rained before the time of Noah is at least respectable.

See here for a previous post on the title question, dealing with different evidence from the Bible, which also suggests that it rained before the Flood. See here for consideration of other questions related to the flood.

Thanks for reading!

How many people perished in Noah's flood?

In the first place, it was God's flood, not Noah's.

I was studying for my Sunday School lesson, some time ago, and was amazed to read that some people think that there may have been as many as 3,000,000,000 people on earth at the time of the Flood, who were, presumably, drowned. Where did this figure come from, I wondered? What is the evidence for it?

Well, of course, there isn't any evidence for it, but, with the right assumptions, human population growth would have accomplished this.

This figure may have come from a book by Henry Morris, which is excerpted here. If so, that's interesting, because that isn't what Morris actually wrote, according to the excerpt. What he was actually writing about was the human population after the flood, which, he said, could have expanded to billions from the time of the flood to the time he wrote.

This web page simply asserts that the population at the time of Noah "probably numbered at least several billion persons!" So does this one. Neither gives reasons, or documentation, for the assertion.

This page says that there were enough generations (up to 15) from Adam to Noah, which would have been enough time to produce up to a billion people.

All of these are speculation. We just don't know how many people perished in the Flood.

See here for more questions about Noah's flood.

Thanks for reading.

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by David Snoke, part 10

I have published a series of posts on David Snoke's A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (Grand Rapids, Mi: Baker Books, 2006). The latest post is here.

In his eighth chapter, Snoke considers the Flood.

He begins by discussing miracles. Real miracles, he says, leave traces (sometimes large traces) in the real world. For example, A blind man healed by Jesus could really see, after the miracle. This relates to the Flood, in that, if there was a world-wide deluge, there should be world-wide traces. He is not convinced that such evidence is present, in spite of the work of so-called flood geologists. (Snoke is not alone. Many other Bible-believing Christian scientists don't find such evidence, either.)

Snoke has a great sentence:
The entire program of flood geology is to argue that science as we know it supports their interpretation of the Bible, not to propose unknown laws of physics that no one could guess at unless they were needed to cover up inconvenient facts. (160)

Snoke supposes that there was a flood that covered the entire earth, including the tallest mountains. He then says that, for the results to be consistent with the biblical story of Noah, and with the scientific evidence, there must have been a lot of miracles, involving the migration of the animals; keeping all the needed animals and their food on an ark of limited space; feeding carnivorous animals on the ark; caring for all those animals by just eight people; heat disposal -- the number of animals in that space must have generated lots of heat, enough to kill some of them, and Noah and his family; survival of animals from extreme climates, or unique habitats, such as tide pools, on the ark; the appearance and disappearance of enough water to cover the earth that much; that the earth's crust did not sink under that much water; that plants and trees survived flooding for that length of time; survival of freshwater fish in salt water (or the reverse); survival of small invertebrates under the water (or caring for anthills, worms, nematodes, etc., on the ark); fossil sorting after the flood; and trees remaining upright during the flood. An amazing list. Snoke concludes that it just didn't happen that way, not because God couldn't have done it, but because the Bible doesn't indicate that any of these things happened.

Says Snoke:
Just as young-earth advocates read in an entire re-creation of the world in the curse of Genesis 3, flood geology reads in another entire re-creation, not mentioned in Scripture, after the flood. Flood geology has God creating the world not once, but three times, without any direct Scriptural evidence, and in contradiction to the statement in Genesis 2:1 that the entire creation was completed by the seventh day. (165)

Snoke, who takes the Bible very seriously, presents evidence, which I'll leave to the reader of his book -- you need to read this for yourself -- that the Bible is consistent with the flood being local, not world-wide. He also thinks that there is no scientific evidence for a world-wide flood.

Thanks for reading. Read Snoke.

On the deposition of fossil pollen

. . . considering that millions of fossils have been carefully catalogued with respect to location in the geological column during the past two hundred years, flood geologists can only point to a few possible examples of fossils that do not fit the well-established patterns of distribution. Rather than the very rare exception, flood geologists should expect and would predict out-of-place fossils to be the rule rather than the exception. R. Joel Duff, "Flood Geology's Abominable Mystery," Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 60:166-177, p. 175, September, 2008. The "Abominable Mystery" has to do with the deposition of fossil pollen.

Noah's flood? Was there rain before it?

I have recently been pointed to a fairly old article on the Canopy Theory, entitled "Does the Canopy Theory Hold Water?" from Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, December, 1985. The purpose of the article is to examine the theory that most, or all, of the water that appeared at the time of Noah's Flood was because of a canopy of water vapor that was over the earth before the flood. The author, Thomas Key, argues pretty convincingly that this could not have worked.

I was struck by this statement in his article:

What about the assertion that there was no rain or snow prior to the Flood, and that the only way that plants were watered was by mist (Gen. 2:6) and rivers (Gen. 2: 10)? The references in Genesis do not limit the watering of plants only to a single mist or even to a series of mists and by a river or rivers. Genesis 2:10-14 describes four large rivers in existence before the numerous and complex events of the Sixth Day. These huge rivers obviously could not have come from a mere mist that occurred once or even many times. Rivers come from rains and melted snows. They also come from underground streams. However, underground streams also come from rains and melted snows. The four large rivers in Eden, which went over "The whole land of Ethiopa" [sic] (Gen. 2:13) to Assyria (Gen, 2:14) and included the Euphrates (Gen. 2:14) would have required rains, rains, and more rains over an extended period of time. No mere mist will ever do as an adequate explanation for these vast rivers, and certainly not a mere mist that occurred only a few hours or literal days before.

In other words, it must have rained before the flood. I checked, and found no statement in the early part of Genesis that says that Noah and his contemporaries had never experienced rain, although I have heard people say that they didn't.

Thanks for reading.

Some Questions about Noah's flood

The great flood in the time of Noah was God's flood, not Noah's, but it has often been given Noah's name.

I am well aware that there are debates about the authenticity of the story of Noah, which is told in Genesis 6-10. There are also Bible scholars that believe that Noah was a historical figure, but who doubt that the flood was truly world-wide. (Humans might have been located in a relatively small area at the time of Noah.) I do not have resolutions for such debates. I pose them, and some other questions, below. I'm not sure that any view of Noah and the flood is without serious weaknesses.

1) Why is the story of Noah in the Bible?
Only God can answer that question, of course, but the story emphasizes God's hatred of evil, His love for the righteous, and His concern for not just humans, but for all of his creation.

2) Did Noah really exist?
New Testament passages, as well as the Old Testament, seem to indicate pretty clearly that the answer is "yes". They include at least these: 1 Chronicles 1:4, where Noah and his sons are included in the genealogies of the ancestors of the Hebrews (Noah is also listed in the genealogy in Luke 3); Isaiah 54:9, where God, through Isaiah, promises comfort to the Israelites, as He made a promise to Noah; Ezekiel 14, where the prophet lists Noah as an example of righteousness, along with Job and Daniel; Matthew 27, where Jesus compares the surprise that will attend His return with surprise at the destruction in the time of Noah (this is repeated in Luke 17); Hebrews 11, where Noah is listed as one of the heroes of faith; 1 Peter 3, where Peter speaks of Noah (I'm not clear on the meaning of that passage); and 2 Peter 2, where Peter uses the story of Noah as a warning to the wicked, and a comfort to the righteous.

3) Was the flood world-wide?
Maybe. Maybe not. The description says that it covered the whole earth, but 1 Kings 10:24 says that the whole earth came to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Surely not inhabitants of the New World? Australia? Daniel 8:5 says that, in a vision, Daniel saw a goat coming across the whole earth. Perhaps, in both these cases, especially the first, the whole known earth is meant. Perhaps not. Perhaps that is what is meant in the case of Noah's flood. I don't know. There are Bible scholars who believe it was world-wide, and those who don't.

Added May 19, 2020:
A Christian geologist, who believes that there really was a Flood in Noah's time, gives reasons why he is not convinced that that flood was really world-wide. He also does not believe that it was responsible for the many geological phenomena that some Young-Earth Creationists claim that it was.

4) Where did all the water come from? Where did it go after the flood?
Especially if the flood was world-wide, there is no good natural answer to that question. There doesn't seem to be enough water to cover the mountains all over the earth. God could, of course, have specially created the necessary water, and removed it after the flood. If the flood was local, the amount of water required would have been much less, depending on where humans were living at the time. Some have suggested that they were living in a large valley, which, after the flood, became the Mediterranean, or the Caspian, Sea.

5) Where is the geological evidence for the flood?
Although some claim that there is geological evidence for a world-wide flood, few, if any, academically trained geologists believe this. One practicing geologist, trained by young-earth creationist geologists, came to doubt that the geological evidence was there, and asked some other geologists, also trained by persons who believed in the influence of the flood, how what they had learned about the flood from this training was useful in searching for petroleum. None of them could give a positive response.

6) If the flood wasn't world-wide, why didn't God just tell Noah to go somewhere else?
I don't know. He was a witness of God's righteousness while he and his sons were building the ark, and perhaps God's mercy wanted his work, and his righteousness, to bring about repentance in his neighbors.

7) Were there any dinosaurs on the ark?
See previous post.

8) What happened to all the plants that were exposed to water for a long period of time?
This page attempts to answer that. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

Added July 10, 2020: Here's an article on the distribution of plants and the flood. For example, there are no cacti in the Old World, which is hard to explain, if there was a world-wide flood which could have distributed seeds around the world.

9) What happened to the salt-water fish during a world-wide flood?
This page answers that, or tries to. Maybe that answer is correct, maybe not.

10) How did slow-moving animals, like sloths, and some turtles, get to the ark, and how did they get back after the flood, if it was world-wide?
God may have started them earlier than, say, zebras, I suppose.

11) How about amphibians (frogs, salamanders, and the like), which would have been expected to dry out if they had to travel long distances over land?

12) Presumably the ark was built in the Middle East, or in East Asia. How did animals from North and South America, and Australia, get to the ark, and how did they get back after the flood, if it was world-wide?
It is possible that there were land bridges between all the continents, that aren't there now, but this flies in the face of the geologic evidence, and scientific evidence is part of God's revelation to us (Psalm 19, Romans 1:20).
It is possible that God directed their footsteps (or flight), and transported them to the vicinity of the ark, and back. Note that, especially in Australia (and other smaller isolated land masses) there are animals that don't live anywhere else. Did they leave the ark and go straight home, without leaving any offspring behind?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions for sure. Some people claim to. Perhaps they are right.

See my previous post on the question of whether or not dinosaurs are still alive.

Thanks for reading.

This post was slightly edited on December 27, 2016 and January 19, 2017.

See also these questions, raised by a different blogger.

Added on August 3, 2017: For further material on the flood (not by me) see this post, which is part of a series of five. You can easily access the rest of the series from it.

December 13, 2017: I quote from an article by Caspar Hesp:
In a YEC global flood scenario, it is problematic to explain how all marsupial descendants and fossils could have been constrained to the Americas and Australia, before and after dispersion from the Ark of Noah. Post-Flood hyperspeciation after a single migration cannot be invoked because the variety among marsupials is too extreme to be categorized as a single “kind” or “baramin”.

For an in-depth, and very critical, analysis of YEC's view of the Flood, see this article.

elbogz on the capacity of Noah's ark

Elbogz, one of my most faithful commenters, mistakenly left a long comment on this post, when he meant to leave it on this one. His comment was related to the question of whether dinosaurs are still alive or not. I have decided to copy his comment, without change (except to add asterisks) as a post, using a different color to indicate quotation:

The young earth creationist arguments are as useful to the church as the argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

I disagree with your statement Just because young-earth creationists claim something is true doesn't make it false.”

I’ve yet to read anything from a young earth creationist that is even remotely true*; and that to me, that is the true sin. When have to lie about the world in order to believe in God, then what?

The kids in the church now sing, “Behemoth” was a dinosaur and realize one day these children will read a real science book are realize the church lied to them, and walk away. Look at the recent statistics published that show a mass exodus of children from the church when they reach college.

Noah’s ark is always the biggest lie of all. Let’s assume for the sake of my rant here, that what the young earth creationist say is true. The ark contained 15,500 “kinds” of animals**, (including dinosaurs) and the average size was that of a sheep. The ark contained one window, and 8 people. Each person would have to feed 1938 animals a day. They were tough biblical people that worked 16 hours a day. They would have to feed 121 animals an hour or about one animal every 30 seconds. Sheep eat about 25 pounds of hay a day so each person would have to lift and move 1.5 tons of hay per hour.

Oh, wait, there is the poop. Now most of us don’t have a couple of sheep to observe, but lets take 2 large dogs. Now if we scoop up the poop of those two large dogs, and then throw it off the ark, and assume a sheep poops about 5 pounds a day, then each person has to shovel about 9690 pounds of poop a day, carry it up to the one window and throw it out.

Perhaps they left the poop on the Ark. Here is my scientific experiment on the poop problem. Take 2 large dogs. Scoop the poop of those 2 dogs for one year. Take the poop inside your home and live with it. You are allowed to open one window.

Now that said and done, why, oh why do we do this dance? It all leads to confusion and leads us away from God.

*It is clear, from this and other comments he (?) has made, that elbogz had a crisis of faith, and that young-earth creationism was part of this. I suppose that what he meant to say here is that all the claims of young-earth creationism are false. I hope he would agree that, if, for example, a young-earth creationist said that Jupiter was the largest planet, or that Jesus is God, these wouldn't be false.

**In a subsequent comment, elbogz says that he found this number in a book by Henry Morris. I believe he found the suggestion of a sheep as equivalent to the average size in Morris, also.

I post this, not because I would have said it, but in fairness to elbogz, and also because I do plan to produce a post myself on questions about Noah's flood. I have a number of them, which, in my opinion, point out weaknesses in all the Biblical interpretations of this event. Perhaps next time. The comment quoted above qualifies as a question, too.

Thanks, elbogz! Thank you for reading.

Are dinosaurs still alive?

In his book, The Trouble with Physics, Lee Smolin tells how he met some "members of a Bible college" in an airport, and they told him that they had been to Africa, in part to find evidence that dinosaurs still exist. Smolin asked why they were so hard to find, if they exist, especially since they are large, and some of them seem to have lived in herds. The response was that they hide in caves for most of the day, and are supposed to sort of pull dirt across the entrance from the inside to prevent discovery. (New York: Houghton, pp. 25-26) Smolin was illustrating a similar phenomenon in physics, that is, some claims for a particular theory "are just rationalizations." Smolin had a hard time believing this whole idea, especially the idea about the dinosaurs hiding themselves by pulling dirt across cave entrances. Smolin is a physicist, not a geologist, biologist, or paleontologist. According to him, the Bible college persons brought up the subject that led the conversation to dinosaurs.

What about dinosaurs?

I did a Google search for the words, dinosaurs, caves, Africa, and found, sure enough, several web pages that claim that dinosaurs exist there now. Most or all of these pages are by young-earth creationists, who are either attempting to discredit mainstream science by showing that dinosaurs, which supposedly became extinct more than 60 million years ago, are not extinct at all, arguing that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs on it, or both.

Just because young-earth creationists claim something is true doesn't make it false. Are those who make such claims on to something? My response is that I doubt it, but I'm not absolutely sure.

This page has a section on "dinosaurs in the Bible," which refers to Job 40:15-19, which uses the word "behemoth," in some versions. (See here for the King James translation of this passage. The New King James also uses this word, but there's a note, saying that we don't know what animal is meant.) I have done some serious study on the matter of plants in the Bible, and, for most of the names used, we don't seem to really know what plant was meant. I suspect that the same is true for "behemoth."

I was a little surprised that the page didn't refer to "leviathan," apparently another large animal, which is mentioned in four passages in the King James Bible, namely Job 41, Psalm 74:14, Psalm 104:26, and Isaiah 27:1. Leviathan is/was apparently an ocean creature of some kind.

This page cites three articles, from mainstream science journals, indicating that dinosaur soft tissue has been discovered. If so, that is remarkable, if dinosaurs have been extinct for so long. I haven't seen these articles, nor checked to see if they have been supported or discredited by further work.

OK, let's get logical, and examine various possibilities.

Dinosaurs never existed at all.
This is difficult to believe, because of the fossil evidence.

or Dinosaurs existed.

In which case, they became extinct at some time in the past . . .

If that's true, why? There are three possibilities.

1) The earth is very old, and mainstream science, which claims that dinosaurs became extinct a long time ago, is correct.
2) Dinosaurs (and presumably many other forms of prehistoric life) were destroyed before the creation events described in the six days of Genesis 1. This would be consistent with gap theory. It is probably consistent with mainstream science, also.
3) Dinosaurs were rescued from Noah's flood, but have become extinct since, probably because conditions on earth changed*.

or they didn't.

The evidence cited on the web pages proclaiming that they still live is correct, and some dinosaurs still exist. Perhaps the Loch Ness monster exists, and is one.

*Dinosaurs would have taken up a lot of room on the ark, if there were very many species of them, plus the room needed for their food. Genesis 6 says that Noah was to take a male and a female of each animal, and doesn't mention anything about eggs being brought aboard. If somehow the dinosaurs were represented by eggs, rather than young dinosaurs, where did the eggs come from? As the KJV puts it (Genesis 6:20) the animals were to "come unto thee." (to Noah) (I cleaned up some grammar in this paragraph on August 23, 2007. I also mistakenly re-published this as a draft, not a post, after that.)

Thanks for reading.

Perspectives: Christianity & Science, Mar 2003

Unfortunately, the American Scientific Affiliation is not an organization that is widely known. Too bad. This organization, of and for evangelical scientists, has existed for several decades, and publishes a quarterly journal, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. The articles, book reviews, and letters in that publication are posted on-line for public access after a delay of several months.

The March, 2003 issue is available. There are several articles, including the following (articles are in .pdf format):
"Looking to the Birds: A Perspective on the Interpretation of Nature," by David Lahti is hard to classify, but it's a splendid meditation on God and nature. The birds described are African weaverbirds. Lahti quotes from, among others, C. S. Lewis, John Bunyan, Søren Kierkegaard and John Calvin, as well as citing or quoting several scientific sources.

"Miracles, Intelligent Design, and God-of-the-Gaps," by Jack Collins and "The Panda’s Thumb: Design and Optimality from Plato to Endo," by Richard Thornhill, are important contributions to the discussion of Intelligent Design. Thornhill argues that, in ancient times, design was not believed to always result in perfection, hence minimizing one of the arguments against ID.

Carol Hill and Art Hill (unrelated, so far as I know) have an exchange of letters on whether Noah's flood was world-wide or not.

There are other items which should also be of interest.