LogFAQs > #960137647

Flappers posted...

If there are only two of each animal, then that means all of their offspring will be siblings. And two individuals alone can't repopulate an entire planet, and even if they could they would eventually die -- so at some point all consecutive animals would be inbred.

So it doesn't actually work...

I mean, I guess if you inbreed long enough you'll go through a lot of trial and error with who gets the bad genes and whatnot, and the flaws will eventually be worked out at least somewhat -- but still.

Firstly, the Bible does stipulate that 'there be seven of some'. Though what type of animals those seven ARE is unclear.

But here's the thing. Inbreeding happens a lot already. Think of yourself. You exist (that's 1) and you have two parents (that's 3). Each of those parents have two parents (7) and each of them has 2 (15), and so-on and so-on. If you had 0 inbreeding you wouldn't even be able to get back to medieval times IIRC before your number of unique ancestors would outnumber the total number of humans that ever existed. And God forbid you wanna get married to someone who is also completely genetically independent from you (that doubles the load) and your kid also wants to marry someone genetically different.

To make this worse we know for a fact that there's been genetic bottle-necks in the past and many people were, for whatever reason, unable to move beyond their local area to find mates so it would become impossible to find someone who wasn't related to you somehow (which may be why most people only care about immediate relations). I mean, if you live in a small village with only 100 people and no travel how long do you think it will be before everyone is at least second cousins to everyone else?

Inbreeding also doesn't result in things like mutants with flipper feat and a unique aptitude with the banjo. IIRC the odds of one generation messing up the kids are relatively low. It's the impact of repeated generations with little to no chance to re-diversify that results in things like kids who can't even speak until they're 6. Not that this means you should get stuck in the dryer all of a sudden and have fun with it.

If we are discussing Noah's Ark it's safe to assume we're including God since, ya know, he flooded it all and warned Noah. I suspect that, if God was around and seriously invested in ensuring the survival of life after the flood (but didn't just remake everything for whatever reason) he could have either shored up the genes or found a way to, at least temporarily, halt the genetic degradation if he wanted to.

I don't personally believe the story is real. IMO, Genesis, and most of the Old Testament, is mostly Jewish lore and culture and not essential to the core which is the four gospels. It's like saying that the Star Wars movies have no value and are wrong because Gungan frontier was a bad game.