The Ark

some evolutionists are saying that there wasn't enough time for animals to speciate to what they are now from what they were on the Ark. I read a good article called "Speciation and the animals on the Ark". This is my attempt at supplementing the article with some estimates and numbers. I am only an amateur.

Assumptions

1. assume each pair of animal parents has *2* different species of offspring. Therefore I will be using powers of 2. It could be like dogs which have a litter in which all could be a different species. to make a better simulation you could substitute a different number here like 1.5. since not all offspring may be different species. Really, the Bible doesn't talk about Species anyway - it only talks about *kinds* which is is far different. you can have multiple species within a kind.

2. There are "millions of extant species on the earth today." I will assume around 50 million. a nice round power of 2: 50000000 since nobody has given me a number. (log 50000000)/(log 2)=25.5754247591 therefore 2^{25.5754247591}=50,000,000. Please note that I am being very generous here, since fish that are included in this should not really be included in the list since they are not animals and were not on the Ark.

3. There were 15000-30000 *kinds* of genetically viable *animals* on the ark, according to Dr. Criswell. Note that the fish did not need to be on the ark. let's assume worst-case 15000: (log 15000)/(log 2)=13.8726748803

25.5754247591-13.8726748803=11.7027498788 generations.

4. let's assume 40 years in a generation. 11.7027498788 generations * 40 years/generation=468 years. I don't really know how long the average animal lasts, so I am using human generations. I am almost sure the average will be smaller than this, since most animals I think are smaller than humans. I am being really generous here, because I think that the real average is fairly smaller.

This is plenty of time after the flood for animals to speciate! This math does not take into account climate and environment.

If you want to do curve fitting to today's estimates to fit the exact time that has passed, use 1.07731384785 instead of 2 for the number of different species of offspring (note how ridiculously small the number is - you have to have at least 1 for a power to work properly for what we are doing). Assuming Archbishop Ussher's estimate for the time of the flood (2348BC) we get 2009AD-2348BC=4357 years from today. Divide by 40 years/generation, we get 108.9438 generations.

(log 50000000)/(log 1.0773)=238.0879794 as before. (log 15000)/(log 1.0773)=129.144175 as before. 238.0879794-129.144175=108.9438044 generations. 108.9438044generations*40years/generation=4357.752176 years

Conclusion

There was ample time for speciation from the different kinds of animals on the ark.

References: Speciation and the animals on the Ark, April 2009 Acts & Facts pp.10-12, by Daniel Criswell, PH.D.