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Dutchess_III's avatar

Instead of taking two of every kind of animal, why didn't Noah just take one pregnant one?

Asked by Dutchess_III (47049points) May 13th, 2013

I heard a new take on Noah and the Dinosaurs. Apparently he only took dinosaur eggs so he wouldn’t have to worry about the dino’s eating his sheep and pigs and family and stuff, much less having enough room for them. So that made me think of this question.

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78 Answers

KNOWITALL's avatar

God told him what to do and I’m pretty sure two of each animal was part of the dictate.

And wouldn’t that be incestuous if it was a boy baby? He’d have to be with is mom to make mor babies.

Where did you read this new theory out of curiousity? :)

thorninmud's avatar

Noah: “What’s for dinner?”

Wife: “Omelettes”

Noah: “Again?!”

Dutchess_III's avatar

On the TJMB thread @KNOWITALL

Animals don’t worry much about incest.

Inspired_2write's avatar

Because If he did that there would be no guarantee If it survived to continue.

tups's avatar

Why don’t you just ask Noah? How could we know?

Dutchess_III's avatar

WERE YOU THERE????

Dutchess_III's avatar

I guess it would be a problem for animals that only have one baby at a time, but for animals who have multiple babies it would make more sense.

gondwanalon's avatar

Perhaps a book on Historical Geology would be of some help to you.

Dutchess_III's avatar

I’d like to have that book! Hopefully I’ll have the money to get it soon.

ucme's avatar

A pregnant one wearing pj’s & eating candy…nah that would be fucking stoopid!

Dutchess_III's avatar

Candy that it bought with food stamps.

ucme's avatar

I wonder how big a scandal it’d make if my lil pony became pregnant…

Dutchess_III's avatar

Or The Little Wormaide.

Dutchess_III's avatar

@gondwanalon I was reading excerpts. Most DEFINITELY want that book!

CWOTUS's avatar

Insufficient supplies of ice cream existed at the time.

PS: I was there.

bkcunningham's avatar

Noah and dinosaurs, @Dutchess_III?

Dutchess_III's avatar

Dinos don’t eat ice cream.

Just a thought, @bkcunningham! :)

bkcunningham's avatar

Dinosaurs roamed the earth before Adam.

CWOTUS's avatar

How do you know dinosaurs don’t eat ice cream, @Dutchess_III? Were you there?

Dutchess_III's avatar

You made me spit my coke!

Yes, I was. I was born in Texas and I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

Rarebear's avatar

Well since the whole story is fantasy anyway, you can put whatever spin you want on it.

Dutchess_III's avatar

YOU’RE NO FUN @Rarebear!

ZEPHYRA's avatar

In case there were complications and the pregnancy did not reach the end!

Dutchess_III's avatar

Wait…it just hit me. @thorninmud‘s response explains why the dinosaurs went extinct. Noah ATE them all before they were born.

@ZEPHYRA but God would make sure all the pregnancies would be OK. In fact, he’d make sure each animal had twins, one boy and one girl. That would be simple compared to getting all the animals native to other continents over to Noah to put on the boat.

livelaughlove21's avatar

Who says the unborn animal would live and be healthy? And it’s not as if they could determine the sex of the fetus. If a female animal has female offspring, they can’t exactly mate.

I seriously doubt incest is a huge concern for animals…

Dutchess_III's avatar

Because God would make it it so @livelaughlove21.

Lightlyseared's avatar

Noah was actually told to take 7 pairs of each “clean” animal, 7 pairs of clean birds, and 1 pair of unclean animals (Genesis 7:2–3). Therefore where Genesis 6.19 says “And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark” we know that 2 of every kind was an oversimplification and can argue that “of every living thing” is also an oversimplification and should probably read “of every living thing you own or have easy access to”. In the epic of Gilgamesh (one of 3 surviving Babylonian deluge stories along with Atrahasis and Ziusudra) Utnapishtim loads “all the living beings that I had.” which is probably what Genesis should say.

Any how the point of all this is Noah didn’t take the dinosaurs onto the ark because he didn’t have access to them. Because they had all died out 65 million years earlier.

BhacSsylan's avatar

To those saying incest isn’t a problem, do keep in mind that it is, genetically, for most animals. Of course, that’s still granting this story way more credence then it merits, but still.

KNOWITALL's avatar

@BhacSsylan Yeah, just ask the two headed calf if that was a problem….lol

Rarebear's avatar

I have a funny story about Noah. As is widely known here, I’m from a family of Jewish atheists. My daughter goes to Hebrew school (her choice) and is also an atheist (also her choice). Once she asked me about the story of Noah, so I pulled out my Bible and read it to her. I skipped all the boring posts, and concentrated on the highlights. She was probably about 7 years old at the time.

Here is the conversation that happened after I read it:

“So, Dad, God asked Noah to build a big boat to carry all the animals?”
“Yes, that’s about it.”
Long pause, then:
“Why didn’t God just build it himself?”

bkcunningham's avatar

A seven year old who decided on her own to be an atheist. Hilarious story. lol ~

Rarebear's avatar

@bkcunningham She actually didn’t first say she was an atheist until she was about 11. At the time, she still believed in God, or she said she did.

bkcunningham's avatar

The devil made me do it. I couldn’t resist, @Rarebear. Your story was very cute.

livelaughlove21's avatar

@Dutchess_III Ok, but God could also “make it so” that new animals would fall gently from the sky once the flood was over – no ark required. He could also impregnate animals as he did with the Virgin Mary so mating would be unnecessary. But apparently, he didn’t do that either.

BhacSsylan's avatar

@livelaughlove21 Or could have killed the people in a way that didn’t require killing billions of animals, or simply recreated the animals once it was all over, or could have been better at creating people so they didn’t nearly all turn evil (isn’t God supposed to be perfect?)...

Dutchess_III's avatar

That’s a very good point @livelaughlove21. But how do you know he DIDN’T do just that? Were you there?

Dutchess_III's avatar

@bkcunningham Would you find it odd if a 7 year old said he or she was a Christian?

Edit. Wrong person!

livelaughlove21's avatar

@BhacSsylan Yeah, well that goes without saying. If you ask me, the Christian God is not only imperfect, but he can be a bit of an ass.

@Dutchess_III Actually, I was there. :) And no, I wouldn’t find it odd, but I wouldn’t take it seriously. Children will say they belong to a religion because it’s what their parents tell them to do. A 7-year-old doesn’t know what Christianity is.

Dutchess_III's avatar

I was actually asking bkcunningham. I accidentally put your name in though the devil made me do it. @bkcunningham couldn’t seem to quite believe that a 7 year old could decide she was an atheist “all by herself.” Well, 7 year olds don’t decide much of anything all by themselves, especially which religion they are a part of (or not.)

Mariah's avatar

What if the baby was female?

Berserker's avatar

What about insects? Does The Bible mention them in the Noah story?

Dutchess_III's avatar

Insects can take care of themselves.

We already covered that @Mariah.

And also, incest may be genetically bad, but they didn’t have any other choice after the flood. I mean, there were only two of every kind of animal, right? That isn’t conducive to a large gene pool.

Berserker's avatar

Doesn’t The Bible state that this flood would destroy absolutely everything? Has to include bugs.

Dutchess_III's avatar

But they got a girl bug and a boy bug on the ship.

livelaughlove21's avatar

If anyone has not seen Ricky Gervais’ telling of the story of Noah, check it out. Just a little comedic relief.

Only138's avatar

So they could fuck and make more babies. :)

Dutchess_III's avatar

@Only138 they already did that, before they got on the boat.

yankeetooter's avatar

I haven’t read everyone’s responses (too many, sorry), but wouldn’t taking just one pregnant female be sort of risky? Besides, the idea would be to have the animals continue to procreate after getting off the ark, so you’re going to need a mature male for that…

RealEyesRealizeRealLies's avatar

Seriously… the wicked world he left behind would have seemed as paradise compared to locking yourself up in a wooden box for forty days and nights with thousands of pregnant females.

cookieman's avatar

why didn’t Noah just take one pregnant one?

Yeah right! You try moving a pregnant Rhino against her will.

Pachy's avatar

They’d never have gotten me on that ark without my elephant gal pal !!!

josie's avatar

He wasn’t an efficient operator

genjgal's avatar

No dinosaur eggs going on. That’s bizarre.

I’m quite positive that God didn’t send any eggs to hop on the boat.
Considering the fact that reptiles don’t stop growing, I think the most likely case is the young ones were brought on the ark.
We also needn’t worry about whether or not Noah “took” this or that. All of the animals were sent to Noah by God.

“Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive.”
Genesis 6:20

Also there would have been less animals that needed to get on the boat, because there was more information in each animal’s gene code, since fewer mutations had occurred.
i.e. Just 1 pair of dogs, versus all the different breeds of dogs.
Same with where all the races came from.
That would have helped a ton with space issues overall.

Pachy's avatar

Because God prefers two-parent families.

At least that’s how some would interpret it today.

BhacSsylan's avatar

“Also there would have been less animals that needed to get on the boat, because there was more information in each animal’s gene code, since fewer mutations had occurred.
i.e. Just 1 pair of dogs, versus all the different breeds of dogs.
Same with where all the races came from.”

That is not how genetics works.

ucme's avatar

With all those pregnant beasts they’d probably have eaten the boat with their mad cravings.

Dutchess_III's avatar

No no no. Like I said above, God would have made sure each female was pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl AND the pregnant females were good natured, even the Rhino. As for egg laying animals, God would make sure that all the eggs were viable and fertilized, so you could leave the parents behind to drown and just take the eggs. You wouldn’t have actual turtles or platypuses or chickens or dinosaurs. Just the eggs.

(The genetics just 6000 years ago are the same as they are now. You’d have to go back millions of years to start finding any recognizable differences.)

livelaughlove21's avatar

@Dutchess_III Millions of years? The Earth isn’t that old, silly! :)

@genjgal Say what? Creationists believe God created all animals (and humans) as they exist today, don’t they? So Noah would need every species of animal on the ark, including the 6–10 million species of insects. Two dogs wouldn’t cut it.

It’s amazing they had no termite damage in that ark, isn’t it? And that all the wild animals got along.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Oh! I forgot @livelaughlove21. So, as @bkcunningham said, the dinosaurs were extinct before Adam and Eve were invented, which means…they were created on Tuesday and went extinct on Thursday, before Adam and Eve were invented on Saturday.

Lightlyseared's avatar

Of course the main consideration is who dealt with all the shit all those animals produced and where did they store all the food.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Maybe God made it so they didn’t have to eat the whole time?

genjgal's avatar

@livelaughlove21 There is only one species of dog. All dogs no matter what breed they are, can mate together. All the different types of dogs are only different breeds. These great differences in dog breeds results from micro-evolution. Micro-evolution is basically any change in frequency of the allele pool. (If you’ve studied biology that should make sense.) This video explains micro-evolution well. Young earth creationists believe that all dogs (or insert other animal) are descended from one pair of dogs, which contained all the genetic posibilities, and then through micro-evolution we have arrived here with hundreds of different breeds. (No change in species occured.)

Dutchess_III's avatar

Micro evolution that was initiated and refined by humans who started with wolves, I might add. Same with domestic cows, chickens, plants (like corn) apples, and what-have-you.

livelaughlove21's avatar

@genjgal I’m very aware that all dogs belong to the same species – well, the domestic dogs, anyways. I really was commenting on the blatant impossibility that all species of animal could’ve been on the ark. The idea is ridiculous. Like I said, 6–10 million species of insects. If you have two of each, that’s 12–20 million individual bugs. And I suppose none were squashed by an elephant’s massive foot…thank God!

Dutchess_III's avatar

Dogs and wolves are the same species. Dogs are descended from wolves, and not that long ago. They can still interbreed.

livelaughlove21's avatar

@Dutchess_III The domestic dog is a subspecies of the wolf, and most dogs cannot successfully breed with wolves. Not that any of this dog talk matters, considering what I just said my actual point was.

If anything, wouldn’t Noah just have two wolves, or do we have some reason to believe that dogs had already been domesticated during Noah’s time?

bkcunningham's avatar

God did not command Noah to take insects on board the ark.

livelaughlove21's avatar

@bkcunningham Then how the hell did they all survive, supposedly?

Didn’t he destroy “every living thing” on Earth, save for the creatures on the ark and, presumably, fish and other sea creatures?

bkcunningham's avatar

I have read and heard different discussions. Some say diapause, on floating debris and by burrowing.

livelaughlove21's avatar

@bkcunningham I just wish he would’ve destroyed the palmetto bug.

bkcunningham's avatar

Lol. I am trying to think of a purpose for them. I can only think that they are food for lizards.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Dogs were not domesticated 5000 years ago. Just sayin’. If the insects had burrowed, @bkcunningham, they would have drowned.

livelaughlove21's avatar

@Dutchess_III That’s what I’m saying.

mattbrowne's avatar

Because myths are not historic events.

Asking why Noah didn’t just take one pregnant animal is like asking why it was a snake talking to Eve instead of a parrot.

livelaughlove21's avatar

@mattbrowne Oh, that’s easy. Because there’s no way Satan would disguise himself as something as harmless as a colorful bird. A serpent is way cooler and more ominous. ;)

Dutchess_III's avatar

@mattbrowne…. it wasn’t a serious question.

mattbrowne's avatar

I know :-)

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