Your thorny theological questions ANSWERED

October 20, 2015 • 1:00 pm

Reader and artist Pliny the in Between published a cartoon on Evolving Perspectives, and sent it to me with the note:

I’m thinking about launching a website like Answers in Genesis but with a slightly different approach to the material.

The title is “Cleanup on Orbit Three”:

europa1.001

47 thoughts on “Your thorny theological questions ANSWERED”

  2. Whenever I ask a religious person a question like this I get an answer (you ALWAYS get an answer) that reminds me of a 4-year old explaining why the sky is blue, etc.

    I’m sure a devoted Christian would tell you the water sank back underground from where God pulled it up to make it rain so much in the first place.

    There are so many Ark questions. How did the similar animals happen to migrate to the same areas (e.g., all marsupials ended up in Australia)….

    1. I’m sure a devoted Christian would tell you the water sank back underground from where God pulled it up to make it rain so much in the first place.

      I asked such questions when I heard of them. The answers were child simple of little logic or naturalism. Others just gave the black box answer that they drained away. And that the water came from a “firmament” that encircles the Earth at one time. But to have that it would be so wide that it would have dragged the moon with it out of orbit…

      There are so many Ark questions. How did the similar animals happen to migrate to the same areas (e.g., all marsupials ended up in Australia)….

      Were all the “7 of the clean” animals sacrificed or were there two left to repopulate? And since the literal dues ex Machina can do anything science is replaced with magical thinking which can and have gone many paths. Who needs limited science when you have that?

    2. I always wondered about the fact that all the animals in the world were within walking distance of Noah’s place…

    3. Well, if you’ve already accepted that the Flood happened, i.e. that a planetary scale amount of water that had not been there before was somehow deposited onto the earth, then it is perfectly rational to accept that the water was somehow removed.

      But the correct answer for any believer is simply, “Goddidit.” Anything other than that suggests that their faith is not as pure as it is supposed to be. It also avoids making them look like they have the reasoning abilities of a 4 year old.

    2. Noah: “Oh, Japheth! Yoo Hoo, Japheth! Time to get the pooper scooper!”
      Japheth: “Aw, dad, why can’t Shem or Ham do it? They never have to do it!”

      1. I once saw an interview with James Irwin, the creationist astronaut who was searching for the ark on Mount Ararat. He said that that when the ark was found, the technology on it would blow everyone away. “How did they circulate air? How did they dispose of waste? It’s going to answer a lot of questions.”

    3. Hi Ben:

      Ask and you shall receive. The Sensuous Curmudgeon actually addressed this issue here and here.

      And don’t miss the comments, in which general hilarity ensues!

      1. “While it is possible that God made miraculous provisions for the daily care of these animals, it is not necessary — or required by Scripture — to appeal to miracles.”

        No, of course not. Why appeal to the divine for cleaning up waste? Holy shit…I mean isn’t suspending a firmament above the Earth for several thousand years enough?

  4. Excellent as always!

    Now if you could just tell me how all the flightless birds like the Kiwi made it to NZ from Mt Ararat, we’ll be sorted. 🙂

    1. The Kangaroos gave them a lift as far as Australia. After that, they caught a ride on some sharks.

    2. They must have ridden the stupendous currents caused by all that water flowing away, somewhere. Is it really really humid in NZ by any chance?

      1. ‘Fraid not. Humidity is pretty rare. And I’m not sure there are any ocean currents that could’ve done it either. Of course, God could have created one especially for the occasion I suppose?

  5. Great cartoon!

    I remember reading a creationist trying to explain where all the water came from in the first place, after someone had calculated how much it would take to cover the Himalayas. The person argued that the Himalayas weren’t there at the time, having been caused later by tectonic movement — which suddenly turns into fact for this purpose…. I was impressed with the idea of India suddenly upping anchor and plowing through the ocean quickly enough to make its journey in a thousand or two years…

    1. In a similar vein…they’ll insist that the Ark was viable because there were only a few representative archetypes of species; say, one single cat “kind.” And then, after the Flood, these “kinds” subsequently “microevolved” into the diversity we see today. But never mind that such change is radically more rapid than any ever observed anywhere — and, further, it went completely unremarked upon by the very Biblical characters who would have been watching it happen before their very eyes! And then this rapid microevolution suddenly stopped, since we no longer see it today….

      These people are confused. Very, very, very confused.

      b&

    2. When “debating” a creationist with whom I go around a lot, I once calculated the amount of water it would take to cover “all the high mountains”. It’s about three times what is actually in the oceans. He replied as you’ve indicated, that at that time the hills were low, so not so much water was needed. Not sure if that’s the particular conversation you saw or not (it was on gocomics); I only wish at the time I’d thought to respond to him that, “no, actually the tallest mountains at that time were 20 miles high,” and then redone the calculation to show the truly ludicrous amount of water that would entail. When he would say “where did you come up with that figure?” I’d respond “same place you came up with the ‘fact’ that there were nothing but low hills at the time.

    3. Later tectonic movement; the entire Himalayas rose up in less than 6 thousand years!! These loons have no idea do they?

  8. sign me up!!!
    By the way, PCCE, I was in Madison yesterday and took a photo of F v. F in front of the FFRF (lots of Fs in that explanation) building for your collection . . . will send soon.

  9. It’s interesting to approach the Bible from a “what were they thinking” perspective. In this case it seems they thought of water that dries up as simply disappearing, and that rain comes from a reservoir that God created above the sky when he “divided the waters from the waters.” (Genesis 1:6-7)

    You can also explain the daylight that existed for three days before the Sun was created by considering that it’s not really obvious that the sun is solely responsible for the day. The stated role of the Sun is to “rule” or “govern” the day, not create it. (Genesis 1:18) If you’re not inhibited by elementary school scientific knowledge, it’s easy to imagine a bright blue sky without the Sun.

    When you wonder what sort of crazy conclusions human beings are prone to reach about the world around them in the absence of science, you’ll find plenty of “answers in Genesis.”

    1. That sounds about right.

      I really enjoyed the BBC series The Day the Universe Changed because it was all about the history of our perceptions of things and how those perceptions change with science (it botched relativity at the end, but hey..)

  10. I think g*d always kept a large sump pump around since he was always getting pissed off.

  12. G*d the cleaning lady.. man, thing. I don’t know why he just didn’t use a straw and suck it up.

  13. So… How did saltwater animals survive the massive desalination and how did freshwater animals survive at all? WHERE DID ALL THE SALT GO?!

    1. Heck, what about the deep sea creatures that require a specific range of temperatures and pressures to survive on the seabed? Adding enough water to smother mountains would radically increase both conditions, and not everything down there was going to swim upwards to find them again. Not in forty days, definitely.

  14. I at least think it’s classy that g*d used a natural sponge. Very green of him.

    Pliny, this new series could be a hit! Looking forward to more exposed ridiculousness from the beeble.

  15. I’m not sure I’m speaking out of place but regular followers of our friend Pliny should know that Pliny doesn’t get the traffic that such an exceptional site deserves. This, of course, is not lost on Pliny — the subtitle of the site is “Only SETI returns fewer hits”.

    I’m suggesting that we all bookmark Evolving Perspectives and give the artist and site all the encouragement we can.

      1. Very good idea. I had seen no other pictures of g*d before. Works out quite allot it seems.

  18. You can tell that Pliny isn’t a bible-believing Christian. If he was, he wouldn’t have made the mistake of showing a MAN doing the clean up. That’s clearly woman’s work.

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