How many animals were on the Ark?

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Unanswered questions about the flood > How many animals were on the Ark?

This is perhaps the most damning criticism of the entire argument for the literal truth of the Noachian flood. As all anti-evolutionary ideologies by necessity require taxa to be Platonic units, essentialistic over time, morphologic stasis is an inextricable component of such ideologies (so as to preclude a speciation event). The implications are staggering. Creationist logic requires the presence of every extant species on the Ark, which literally numbers in the millions. If creationism is to be internally consistent, it cannot argue for morphologic change whatsoever, as there is nothing in morphologic change, which would preclude a speciation event. Thus, creationists must argue that every single living taxon was aboard the Ark, if they wish to avoid tacit admission that their argument is bankrupt.

JGK

However, one must not underestimate the ingenuity of creationists. That discussion is quite correct if a created kind or baramin is a single species that can never produce another species; Noah's family would have an absolutely huge workload. However, many creationists accept the occurrence of speciation; they believe that baramins can contain several species, sometimes large numbers of species. If most species are in such large baramins, then Noah's family's workload is much reduced -- they only have to care for 2 or 14 representatives of each baramin, rather than each species. And after that flood ends, those representatives can multiply and diversify and speciate, producing the numerous species observed today.

Yes, big-baramin creationists accept a lot of evolution, though they call it "variation within a kind" and claim that it is not really evolution.

LP

Granted, LP. I like to call it: "creationistic contortionism."

JGK