I'm Against Sola Scriptura. AND. I'm a Fundie. Unlike a certain Ian Plimer.

This is written* by my friend (with some tensions) Mackey:

I have previously pointed to the ironical - and I think humorous - situation whereby the likes of an anti-fundamentalist professor Plimer can sometimes be clearer about certain principles of biblical exegesis than are those who embrace sola scriptura; whilst the latter can sometimes, here and there, be more scientifically accurate than are the professional scientists.

Ian Plimer will, in the case of the fundamentalists’ global Flood, absolutely and hilariously ridicule - and rightly so - such a notion, using a heady mix of science, common sense, and sailing nous.

He will describe the preposterous situation of a Queen Mary sized Ark being tossed hither and thither in a turbulent global sea, it being overloaded with dinosaurs and other massive animals, not to mention those swarms of irritating insects and pests.

OK, what are Ian Plimer's credentials in shipbuilding or navigation?

Ian Rutherford Plimer (born 12 February 1946) is an Australian geologist and professor emeritus at the University of Melbourne.

Thank you, wiki!

Wait, he has some connection:

Plimer is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering

Now, what was he saying again?

the preposterous situation

Pretty please, make it "of living among millions or billions one year, being shut off in an ark, and a year later being lone survivors, a crew of 8" ... that situation is preposterous. But that's how God arranged for our survival.

of a Queen Mary sized Ark

The Ark is actually shorter. Koreans evaluated the Ark to 137 m, while RMS Queen Mary was around 300 m.

being tossed hither and thither

I calculated the rolling period of the Ark, it corresponds to a passenger ship.

in a turbulent global sea,

It would certainly have been turbulent in the bottom streams, touching rock or deposing sediment from hypersaturation. But the turbulence on the surface in a high degree depends on angle of waves. A wave that's 10 m high and 10 or even just 20 m from crest to crest is turbulent. A wave that's equally 10 m high but 100 or 200 m from crest to crest isn't.

Now, the waves can be idealised to circle segments, and the centre of each has a lowest possible placing at the bottom. If a wave of 10 m has a width of 20, probably the sea bottom is sth like 20 m below the crest. But this won't happen if the bottom is about 1 km lower. On the open Pacific, you have winds in which it's unsafe to stand openly on Kon Tiki or Uru, but that's for the risk, of getting swept off the raft. The waves didn't sisk sinking them.

La isla del día siguiente. Crónica de una travesía por el Pacífico** es el relato de esta odisea que lideró Kitín Muñoz y en la que, además de él y de Frattini, ahora con el Reto Pelayo, participaron Pepe de Miguel, Kiko Botana y Juan Ginés García, quienes buscaron emular los pasos del legendario explorador y biólogo noruego Thor Heyerdahl y sus espectaculares viajes con sus naves Kon-Tiki, Ra, Ra II y Tigris.

The Island of the Next Day. Chronicle of a crossing of the Pacific is the story of this odyssey that was lead by Kitín Muñoz and in which, apart from him and Frattini, now with Reto Pelayo***, participated Pepe de Miguel, Kiki Botana and Juan Ginés García, who sought to emulate the steps of the legendary explorer and biologist from Norway, Thor Heyerdahl, and his spectacular voyages with the "ships"° Kon-Tiki, Ra, Ra II y Tigris.

So, Uru and Kon-Tiki were on the Pacific. The Atlantic, where we had Ra and Ra II is less deep. Even there Thor managed. Such waters are not turbulent. Not to an Ark floating sideways in a wave trough where the distance to the crest is safely great.

A large regional Flood would be less safe, since the water would be shallower.

it being overloaded

I don't get that impression, given that one couple of hedgehogs on the Ark easily gave rise to 17 species in 5 genera. There are dog breeds that look more different than Erinaceus Europeaeus does from Hemiechinus auritus.

with dinosaurs and other massive animals,

I'm not a huge fan of Kent Hovind, given his dissertation disses Church Fathers and Alexandrine school, given his insistence "this is not my wife, it's just a picture of her," cute, but is a totally unnecessary polemic against the basics behind Nicaea II in 787, or just his take on alcohol, my grandpa was a distiller. But even Kent Hovind can answer this: if juvenile examples entered the Ark they didn't take up all that much space nor require all that much food. Noah only needed to "take a blue one and a pink one" not necessarily ones that were already ready for reproduction.

not to mention those swarms of irritating insects and pests

I'm not sure how much lice eggs, a k a nits, can survive without a host. But apart from lice, who need human hosts with warm blood, once hatched, I'm not aware of any insect that couldn't theoretically have survived on some flotsam. Genesis 6:20 when mentioning creeping things probably meant reptiles rather than insects. Leviticus 11:20 uses another term for them. So it's not as if the text forced us to believe insects were on the Ark. Those that were (not as passengers) probably were the ones best suited for food (to birds or hedgehogs), perhaps also compostation of waste.

Perhaps I should mention where I did my calculations of number of animal pairs, rolling period, and so on: Baraminological Note · For Sea-Farers .... · Rolling Period of Ark? · Ark : empty weight and freighted weight, number of couples on the Ark. · Small Tidbits on Ark, Especially Mathematical.

With the competence Ian Plimer probably has from the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, he could arguably prove the feasibility of the Ark better than I, if not as well as the Korean team, but he was set on ridiculing Creationists, so, he gave his techno skills a vacation.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sts Hermes and Hadrian of Marseille
1.III.2026

Massiliae, in Gallia, sanctorum Martyrum Hermetis et Hadriani.

PS. I was tired this night and didn't attend to the fact that Lord's Days take precedence over most Saints' Days, especially the ones in Lent. It's obviously Second Lord's Day of Lent, also known as Reminiscere, and Sts Hermes and Hadrian are just remembered, not actually celebrated, even in Marseille./HGL

* Genesis, Flood, Ark Mountain (you may need to log in to Academia), despite this passage, the typological readings seem very decent. Edifying. Wish he had left out that non-edifying words, but, but ...

**La isla del día siguiente
http://nauta360.expansion.com/2016/11/03/de_costa_a_costa/1478197268.html

*** I suppose the Spanish means "now in couple with cancer survivor Reto Pelayo"

° Rafts or Egyptian style reed ships.

Behemoth in Job?

What are the exact alternatives to a Sauropod, as Creationists like to argue, me among them?

An Australian Catholic (of sorts), Damien Mackey, has been recently promoting Ian Plimer's view on Dinosaurs on the Ark*, but then in a second part** gives an alternative explanation for Behemoth and Leviathan.

He opts for Hippopotamus:

Now the word Behemoth is undoubtedly a Hebrew attempt to render the Egyptian, p-ehe-mau, ‘hippopotamus’, probably not found in Palestine. Leviathan is obviously, from its description, the crocodile. These fierce creatures were both natives of the Nile in Egypt. They were not dinosaurs.

Previously he cites St Thomas Aquinas considering Behemoth an elephant:

For centuries, students of the Bible have questioned the identity of behemoth and leviathan. “In the Middle Ages, some theologians, like Albert Magnus, conceived of behemoth as a symbol of sensuality and sin. Others, like Thomas Aquinas, equated behemoth with the elephant, and leviathan with the whale” (Gordis, 1978, p. 569)— both being natural monsters in the literal sense, but representing diabolical power in a figurative sense.

So, Behemoth is described in a way which makes sense both for elephants and for hippopotami, the latter also having linguistic support from Old Egyptian.

I think I argued about ten or fifteen years ago, that a sauropod, apart from having a tail not only movable as a cedar tree in the storm but also as big as one, unlike both elephant and hippo, actually approximates both.

Like a hippo, it could be likely to support its weight in water.

Like an elephant, it can be tamed. Perhaps even used in battle, if the serpopards of the Narmer Palette are sauropods.

Look what news say of the hippo:

A farmer in South Africa has been killed by his pet hippopotamus, after repeated warnings that it was a wild animal that could never be tamed.

Humphrey the pet hippo kills owner in South Africa
David Smith in Johannesburg, Mon 14 Nov 2011 14.13 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/14/pet-hippo-humphrey-kills-owner

Now look what the Bible says about behemoth and leviathan:

Job 40:19 In his eyes as with a hook he shall take him, and bore through his nostrils with stakes.

This suggests you can do some kind of taming with the Behemoth.

Here are the comments from Haydock Bible:

Ver. 19. Stakes. Serpents attack the eyes of the elephant, and sometimes drag it by the trunk into the deep, where it is drowned. Pliny viii. 12. Solin xxxviii.

Others read with an interrogation: "Shall one take?" &c. Will any one dare to attack it openly? The elephant is taken by stratagem, either in pits covered with a little earth, or by a tame elephant in an inclosure, and (C.) lying on her hack to receive the male. Arist. anim. v. 2.

When he has entered, the gate is shut, and the animal is tamed by hunger; being thus taken by his eyes. Judith x. 17. Chal. "They pierce his nostrils with bands." Thus other animals are led about, (v. 21) and the elephant might be so treated in those days; though of this we have no account. C.

Prot. "his nose pierceth through snares;" or marg. "will any bore his nose with a gin?" Here they conclude this chapter, which commences C. xxxix. 31. in Heb. But the Sept. agree with us. H.

This suggests, like the elephant and unlike the hippo, the behemoth can be tamed in some sense.

Unfortunately, the new site for Haydock comment does not give the full names and does not give a list of abbreviations either, though C. = Challoner, I think, and Chal. = Challoner, obviously. H. is probably Father George Leo Haydock himself.

For the Leviathan, we see it is probably impossible to tame it at all, next verses:

[20] Canst thou draw out the leviathan with a hook, or canst thou tie his tongue with a cord? [21] Canst thou put a ring in his nose, or bore through his jaw with a buckle? [22] Will he make many supplications to thee, or speak soft words to thee? [23] Will he make a covenant with thee, and wilt thou take him to be a servant for ever? [24] Shalt thou play with him as with a bird, or tie him up for thy handmaids? [25] Shall friends cut him in pieces, shall merchants divide him? [26] Wilt thou fill nets with his skin, and the cabins of fishes with his head? [27] Lay thy hand upon him: remember the battle, and speak no more.

In other words, you can kill the Leviathan but not tame him.***

There was a man who had a pet croc, Anthony J. Drexel Biddle. This was recorded by Cordelia Drexel Biddle in the book My Philadelphia Father, which served as basis for the screenplay by Disney (just hope the alligator actually was in Cordelia's book and not just the Disney film, but I think so). By the way, this Philadelphia millionaire was a relative of Katharine Drexel of holy memory. She was niece and he great-grandson of Anthony Joseph Drexel.

So, crocs and hippos are fairly equal and behemoth and leviathan obviously unequal in tameability.

I would say, neither the croc nor the hippo are really tameable, and giant crocs like the ones found as fossils were probably even less tameable than the alligator of Drexel-Biddle. Leviathan could be a croc, and since you can survive a fight with it, I would not consider a T Rex very probable.***

But sauropods, if the serpopards on Narmer tablette are such, as well as elephants have a greater taming potential than the hippo.

And, as said before sauropods have a watery lifestyle like to hippos (which can be the reason why behemoth gave the Egyptian word for hippo) and a tameability and potential battle use like elephants.

So, hippo, elephant, incompatibility with either in the real life, pretty much clinches sauropod.

One more, Behold, he will drink up a river, and not wonder: and he trusteth that the Jordan may run into his mouth. In some sense, this would be an obvious hyperbole for how a hippo opens his mouth in the river, but if you consider the throat and stomach of a sauropod, while its mouth is less opened, he can obviously drink by allowing a river stream to simply stream into his mouth. Elephants, as we know, can't, they have to use the trunk first. Unless you pretend the river and Jordan refers to how the elephant then lets the trunk push down the water through the mouth.

So, sauropod fits the bill and Egyptians reusing the word for hippos is no real problem, it is as if someone knowing hedgehogs from lore but never seeing one had named a porcupine hedgehog. Which is not the case but would not have been impossible either.

The reference to sword could of course also mean the horns of a rhino or of a triceratops, but it seems either is meant by "unicorn" and therefore sauropod remains somewhat likely for behemoth. Also, a rhino cannot be tamed and a triceratops, well, I read a Tarzan comic with tame triceratopes in Pal Ul Don, but that is not the equivalent of the Narmer tablette.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Tuesday of First Passion Week
20.III.2018

Update : no crocs these days breathe fire, but Leviathan did. This could be against him being a croc at all, or could mean not all crocs share that ability, just as not all squirrels are flying squirrels. There are several crocs of greater bulk in the fossils then the crocs existing now, and who knows if one of them breathed fire? If we search among dinosaurs, obviously the T Rex is too big to allow man to survive a confrontation, but there are smaller ones, both of same kind (probably, like Allosaurus and even smaller) and of different kinds. My main issue was of course that Behemoth was a sauropod./HGL

* Academia : Monsters in Book of Job Part One: Were Dinosaurs Intended?
by Damien F. Mackey
https://www.academia.edu/36174178/Monsters_in_Book_of_Job._Part_One_Were_Dinosaurs_Intended

On which confer CMI's refutation of Plimer:

"Regarding Ultrasaurus and mating on the Ark—has Plimer considered that God (being in control of which pair went on board the Ark, according to the information given in the Bible) could have ensured that, for at least this kind, only still-immature (and therefore also small) representatives were chosen?" Comment to page 108

CMI : Our point-by-point rebuttal of Plimer’s Book
https://creation.com/plimer-book-our-point-by-point-rebuttal

He actually involves this strawman:

"Apparently Noah and his family had been busy collecting dinosaur eggs:" John Mackay whom he thereafter cites mentions dinosaur eggs for their size, but mentions dino hatchlings as therefore small, never saying that hatchlings came from Noah's "poultry farm", never contradicting the words of the Bible.

** Academia : Monsters in Book of Job Part Two: Were they non dinosaur animals?
by Damien F. Mackey
https://www.academia.edu/36174935/Monsters_in_Book_of_Job._Part_Two_Were_they_non_dinosaur_animals

*** "speak no more" is in a way compatible with dying (but if you die, the imperative is superfluous), in the hypothetic confrontation, but "remember the battle" means, yes, you do have a chance of surviving if you don't bungle it.