BBC Video Part 2: a whale on the ark, a chimp, skulls, dinosaurs, bacteria etc.

I'm just going to tick off the rest of my objections to the ridiculous excuse for a "scientific" presentation in that video, Creationism Road Trip,.

They got evolution writer Jerry Coyne to answer the claims about Noah's ark as being able to contain all the animals.  The usual stupid misrepresentation is the assumption that all the creatures called "species" TODAY would have been on the ark, which is ridiculous.   All the supposedly new "species" since the ark are really just what used to be called varieties, or breeds.  Yes, even when they can no longer breed with the parent population.  So there have been 4300 years during which the various creatures on the ark have split into many new populations of varieties or breeds, hundreds in some cases from the few represented there.

So I have no idea where Coyne got his claim that it would have had to accommodate "16,000 animals"  but since that number has to be made up of breeds that developed since the ark, in the dozens to hundreds to possibly thousands in some cases, and probably even including sea creatures (which were not taken on the ark), or even plants, since I've seen them listed as species in other debates on this subject, the number is bogus.

But the stupidest thing said in this connection was his "challenge" about how a WHALE could have been accommodated on the ark.  

Creatures that live in the water were NOT accommodated on the ark.   Why would they need to be?  And why didn't any of the creationists know that?  They all looked a bit stunned it seemed to me.  Maybe the idea was just too absurd.  Or maybe they were just intimidated, as in "This guy is a hotshot scientist, so maybe he knows something we don't."

A main problem with this film is that they got "creationists" who don't know much, apparently either about science or about the Bible.  So they should have confronted them with science students rather than professors if they had any interest in being fair and balanced. 

So no whales on the ark.  Duh.

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Then there was the idiotic presentation of a chimp as human ancestor and the focus was on how everybody FEELS about being related to a chimp.  When I believed in evolution I had no objections whatever.  Why would I?  I believed it so I accepted it, hardly gave it a thought.  Who CARES how anybody FEELS about such a thing?  This is supposed to be SCIENCE, so the questions should be about claims that we ARE related.

We aren't.
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Bacteria at some sort of fountain in the desert was supposed to prove WHAT?    Scratch that one, it made no sense whatever.

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The interpretation of evolution through those supposedly pre-human to human skulls, that were found in the fossil order from least to most human from the bottom up, depends on the assumption that the fossil order represents TIME.    But if it only represents the fossil contents of layering as a result of the Flood then the position of all the skulls is accidental.

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I was recently reminded that according to the Bible people ate no meat until after the Flood.  While I've never seen any problem with humans occupying the planet with dinosaurs since we share it with other predators, but still it would be easier to live together if they also ate no meat.  They were originally created to eat plants, and it's not clear when they became meat-eaters, at the Fall which was the first drastic change in the world, or after the Flood when people also started to eat meat. 

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If such an excursion is to make any sense at all it should involve people who are both STRONG Bible believers and know a fair amount about science as well.  Getting together a bunch of average Christians who have been taught a smattering of creationism, not a lot of Bible, no science, and have no experience with the debate about these things, proves nothing at all.

JoJo is no Bible believer, she's for gay rights and easily caved in the face of the so-called "evidence" because she really doesn't know the Bible.  She has a sentimental form of "Christianity" which isn't Christianity at all. 

Bronwyn seems to have a strong faith but not necessarily a lot of Bible knowledge.  NOBODY carried a Bible that I noticed, I thought that telling.  She has the right attitude, however, that when you know the Bible is God's word you know the evidence against it is false.

Phil seems like a strong believer but he didn't seem to know any science or even have much of a grip on the usual creationist arguments.  He's right that it's not fair to pit an evolutionist geologist against a bunch of nonscientists.

I couldn't make much out of Sam.  Except the sense that he like Bronwyn was depending more on a determined grip on a blind faith than on a real grasp of either Christian principles or science.

Ahmed made some good points.  He was right to say the skull argument was nothing but conjecture even in the face of the claim that it's "evidence."  Because the assumption that the fossil record reflects millions of years of time is conjecture.