Let's talk religion: The magical Ark vs the tragic Titanic

Ah Noah's Ark, in the U.S. there is a staggering number of people who believe the story to be true. What's weird about this is that so many people say that the Bible can't be taken seriously for its fantastical stories. If people believe in Noah's Ark, but can't believe in a majority of the Bible, how can they assert that they are a Christian/Catholic with full knowledge that they have turned their objective religion into a subjective one? I digress, the point of this article is Noah's Ark, not picking apart the modern Christian ideology and whether it's subjective or not. Now, let's have a discussion and take a look at the facts and mathematics behind the whole thing. Then I shall compare it to superstition, are you all ready?

First we'll talk about the biblical scriptures of the story. The Bible states that Noah was commissioned by an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent and all-knowing being (take a few moments to see how ridiculous that sounds) to build a great ark to hold 2 of every animal since he plans on killing all humans with a great flood, except for Noah's family. Noah, being roughly 30 - 50 years old, asks his first and only son (churches insist on teaching that he had 3 sons when he did this, please read the Bible) to give him a hand with this.

It took them both 20 years to build this ark, which was 200 metres long, 150 metres high, and 50 metres wide. It then took them 7 days to load the ark with two of every species. The flood then lasts 98 years. Then Noah and his family repopulate the Earth by partaking in incestuous sex for hundreds of years. Noah dies at the ripe between 600-750 years old (different copies of the bible print different things). At this time, according to your precious Bible, the Earth was populated by about 1,000,000 humans and BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of animals from every species collectively. Do you know how ridiculous this whole thing sounds? Go on, read it out loud, be prepared to sound like a moron.

Now let's take a look at the facts. Let's compare this great ark to the Titanic. Now the Titanic wasn't much larger that the ark itself, being approximately 268 metres long, 30 metres wide and just as high (there are all estimates), could only hold roughly 3-4000 people and could hold roughly 5000 tonnes in weight. It was also made completely out of steel, iron, cast iron and aluminium, with 6 layers of tempered steel protecting the hull and the entire casing of the build of the ship.

With thousands of workers it still took 4 years, being started on March 31 1901 and being completed with outfitting on March 31 1912. Let's take this data and see how long it should have taken Noah and his only son to build this ark. 3000 men over 4 years, take this figure of progression and you can find that only 25% of progress was made each year (on average, relative stats say otherwise). It took 2 people to make the ark. 2 people divided by 3000 is 6.66^e^-4, which is 0.00066.... Let's multiply this by the many of years it took to fully construct and outfit the Titanic. This is 0.0024. Therefore they made 0.24% of progress on the ark each year. Therefore it took 500 years to build the ark. This is humanly impossible, as it factors in working on Sundays (remembering that the Old and New Testament's alike stated that working on Sundays is punishable by death, hell it was enforced). Add an extra 1/7 of time onto those 500 years. This would extend the time by approximately 72 years. According to the mathematics and Christian logic, these guys should have died by the age of 40 - 50, well before construction on the Ark was finished (remembering that in these time, life spans were incredibly short, roughly 20-30 years). Sounding ridiculous yet? No? Need more evidence? Here's some for you.

The Spine-Tailed Swift is the fastest flying bird in the world, flying at 170 km/h. According to Biblical scriptures, this "vessel" was built in Egypt. Let's assume it was built in Cairo, just for the sake of argument. The distance from Australia (where the Spine-Tailed Swift migrates to during the Winter) to Cairo is approximately 8800 kilometres. It would take 51 hours for the bird to fly from here to Cairo non-stop, we all know that this is impossible. But say for example a polar bear were to try to get to Egypt, it's maximum velocity is 60 mph (96 km/h) whilst swimming and only 20 mph (32 km/h) whilst running. I'll save you all the maths and tell you that it would take a lot longer for the Polar Bear to reach Cairo, but it would die long before it would reach there due to overheating and being outside of its usual environment.

In conclusion,. the story of Noah's Ark is nothing more than a myth, superstition, it should not be taken seriously nor should you use it to indoctrinate your children or friends, because you never know when someone educated comes along and tears it all down.

Creationism versus Evolution: Which has more scientific credence?

I've made my position clear, I'm an Atheist, I don't believe that religion has a place in Science nor does it have a place in government. However, there is an overwhelming amount of people who believe that the Earth was created in 6 days, 6000 years ago and that we were placed here under the image of one or more gods. In this post I'll talk about the arguments from both sides and take a look at the evidence given from the scientific standpoint and the creationist standpoint, all while trying to be unbiased in my argument.

Creationism, the belief that the entirety of the Universe and the Earth was created in just 6 days by the Catholic/Christian/Jewish God. In Genesis, the sequence goes like this; God first created the heavens, then God created Light, then he made a round ball of pure water, then he created the Earth, then he put foliage and animals on the Earth, and lastly he created man (Adam) in his own image using the dirt on Earth. Wait, what? He made animals out of thin air, he created the entire universe using nothing, but had to create man using dirt? Why? From a logical standpoint this makes no sense. Whatever, let's keep going. He created a perfect safe haven for man where there was no disease, no need to eat (thanks to having immortality) and no danger whatsoever. Wait, this also makes no sense. All of the animals were placed in this safe haven known as Eden, even the ones that are inherently carnivorous, including snakes, wolves and crocodiles. You mean to tell me that none of these animals looked at Adam and thought that he might be appetizing? Another thing, according to the Bible we didn't change when we got thrown out of Eden, meaning we were made with an immune system. Why? This makes no sense, especially considering that Eden was a place of happy sunshine's and immunity to DEATH. Fuck it, let's keep going. About a week later, according to Genesis, Adam asked God for a partner because he was lonely, and God said "Sure bro, I'll be right down to make you one." We'd all assume he'd make her out of dirt right? Apparently not so, because God took one of Adam's ribs to make a female partner, Eve. I'm not even going to question this, there are enough holes in the story already. That's creationism in its simplest and most direct form.

That's the story, what evidence do we have that supports this story? The Bible. Yeah, the only "historical" literature we have that claims creationism to be true is the Bible, the good book, the Holy word you get the idea. The Bible was written approximately 80 years after the supposed death of Christ, so most if not all of it is stories that were passed down through generations. We inscribed hearsay into tablets and wrote a book based on the words of the elders. There are many stories in the Bible which are just plain wrong but that's for another day/post.

The most common argument against evolution from the creationist standpoint is that evolution is just a 'theory' and therefor, beyond all evidence, doesn't deserve scientific credence because, according to creationists, it requires a lot of faith to believe that our current developed and evolved species originated from a single cell organism. Another argument is intelligent design. The phrase intelligent design is defined as "the belief that the universe and living things were designed and created by a purposeful action of an intelligent agent." Finally, the last common argument is that both sides of the argument should be taught in school so that children and teenagers alike can make a choice on what to believe.

Creationists tend to throw around the word theory as if it means nothing. Contextually it has different meanings, but in the context that matters in the argument, the scientific medium, a theory is an accepted viewpoint that has been peer-reviewed and has solid evidence behind it. Take gravity for example, it's a commonly accepted law of Physics, but it's still a theory because it's got a withstanding amount of evidence to back it up and scientists everywhere agree with it. Intelligent design, where do I start? It's nothing but creationism with a scientific sounding name slapped onto it. This is commonly referred to by creationists as a solid theory, but as we just learnt from the definition of a theory, there needs to be outstanding evidence for it and peer reviewed documents. There are no scientists, credible scientists, that will tell you that creationism is a solid theory, there are no peer-reviewed documents in the scientific community that agree with the creationist "theory" and there is no evidence to support this theory outside of the Bible, there really isn't. As for the argument that it should be taught in schools alongside evolution, yeah there's no point in discussing this, it doesn't have a place in the classroom.

Now for the other side of the coin, evolution. The Theory of Evolution explains that a series of changes or mutations occurred form one generation that are transmitted on toward the next generation, such that these changes accumulate over time and the successive waves of generations differ considerably from their ancestors (origins). Over the course of millions of years, humans have evolved from being an ape-like creature, to being a bipedal ape-like creature, to a less ape-like creature, and eventually into the 'homo' genus, like homo erectus, homo neanderthalis and homo sapien. The process of evolution is as follows;

1. A series of chemical reactions occurred in the sky and in the sea (this happened almost 4 billion years ago)
2. They met and formed amino acids (approximately 3.5 billion years ago)
3. The amino acids developed ways to propagate themselves.
4. They became proteins - and then the first cells
5. The cells eventually united with each other forming an organism.
6. The organism, a water dweller, eventually adapts to land because of a change in the atmosphere and in the salt content of the seawater.
7. The land dweller eventually through millions of eons, became the primitive ancestor of the majority of present-day oxygen breathing animals.
8. This primitive ancestor had lots of offspring - some eventually became a dog, some a cat, others a rat, and a few, an ape
9. This ape, according to scientists, eventually became us.

We have overwhelming amounts of evidence to support this theory, including fossils, early hand paintings, carbon dating procedures, the very cells we have in our bodies, most of the things around us. Charles Darwin, the father of the Theory of Evolution came to the conclusion of Natural Selection and this very Theory after years upon years of research and experimentation. Evolution explains why we have our tailbones, why we're bipedal when most animals are not, and why homo sapien had a much better chance of survival over homo neanderthalis.

So with the overwhelming amount of evidence we have, what are the common disputes that creationists have with the Theory of Evolution? The missing link argument, the banana argument (this is an odd argument and I'll explain it) and the most common of them all, "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" All of these arguments have been debunked by scientists time and time again. The missing link argument is benign as there really aren't any missing links anymore. The missing link people are talking about is a link between being a bipedal ape-like creature and evolving from some fish man(?). This was and has continued to be debunked by the scientific community, as the only missing links that exist are discrepancies caused by evolution itself. The banana theory is an odd one and requires a lot of faith in God to fully believe. Essentially it's the hypothesis that bananas are a perfect fit in a human hand, thus we must have been made by God's divine intervention. Yeah this is such a weird and stupid argument that I'm not going to address. The last argument; "We evolved from monkeys, but why are there still monkeys?" The answer is simple, we didn't evolve from monkeys, we evolved from an ape-like creature whose common ancestry is shared by monkeys, and more prominently so, apes. Both our species evolved for different survival based reasons as well, monkeys for survival in the Jungle and in trees, we evolved for survival on the ground. It's as simple as that.

So after all of the points and arguments provided, which deserves more scientific credence? Well, personally I think evolution does since Science isn't a debate, you can't choose what you want and don't want to believe. That and evolution has an overwhelming amount of evidence behind it as opposed to creationism which does not. Evolution has been refined and peer-reviewed to death, as opposed to creationism which has remained rigid and hasn't adapted to fit any kind of evidence whatsoever. In conclusion, evolution takes more precedence in a scientific context and thus should be the only theory of our origin's taught in school unless something that has evidence and peer-reviewed papers and documents behind it shows up.