What does god need with a bowl of petunias?
I cannot find anything resembling this. Can you show anything like it?
I found a cite from some professor’s class notes at SUNY in New York:
Here’s another cite that says the same thing. However, the second site goes into more detail and points out a few things that cast a little doubt on my idea that their kidneys would be a problem, because whales just don’t take in that much sea water. I think my hypothesis still holds, but I’m not married to it. I wish I could find a cite about fresh water effects and possible Na deprivation, but I can’t seem to find one.
I’ve written to friend who’s a marine mammal physiologist. He may or may not come by to rescue us from this conversation.
…and why would they reply, “Oh! Not again…!” 
During those 4.5B years would there not have been a whole bunch of very significant floods?
That kinda gets me back to the problems with the OP. There are plenty of ways to make fun of creationists, but for God’s sake, don’t make up straw men. The article briefly referenced some vague “others” on “social media” that chalked up the non story to the great flood, and he took that as a license to just make crap up. He can’t point to a single person that said the whales were drowned or killed by rain. I don’t like creationists either, but, damn, straw men annoy me. Especially since if he thought about it for half a second he would realize that if the Great Flood actually happened, which it didn’t, it would beach a shit load of sea life. I hate idiocy, but I think I hate watching people arguing against idiocy with idiocy a little more.
As to what actually happened, the whale skeletons are 2-7 million years old (not billion), but they were found less than a mile from the present coastline. I think it’s a safe bet that it was a region that whales tended to beach themselves and then the coastline moved out about a mile over a couple of millions of years. No plate tectonics are even necessary to explain that. (Plate tectonics are true, but this is only half a mile from the coastline, we don’t need 'em to explain it).
And let’s not forget that the “slow news day” factor.
But whales are air-breathers, and so in theory they can drown. However, in fact, I can’t imagine what conditions would cause them to drown. Even if the Deluge really did happen, could it have produced the necessary conditions by any stretch of the imagination? Some hyper-undertow?
“Drowning” is irrelevant. Nobody said the whales “drowned” except the OP’s straw man. That’s kinda my problem here.
Well, consider just how much rain would have to be falling. In “forty days and forty nights”, it submerged everything. Even if we assume that “everything” only extends to peak of, say, Mount Ararat, leaving other pointy bits of rock like Everest quite exposed, that’s around 17000 feet of water. Spreading that out evenly gives us a rainfall rate of ~3.5 inches per minute everywhere on the planet continuously over the entire period.
You could probably drown just trying to breathe air with that much rain falling through it…and that’s without a giant nostril pointing straight up.
So if whales don’t drown, then somebody wanted to make it look like they drowned.
I think what we have hear (take off sunglasses) is a killer, whale.
Yeeeowww
Good luck narrowing down a suspect list…everyone knows whales are jerks.
Actually, the presence of straw men could be strong evidence in favour of the biblical flood. They would float to the top, and could be deposited anywhere, which could explain why we keep coming across them.
Thank you for the links above, but before you get too riled up and start throwing around terms like “straw men” please note that this is not Great Debates. I didn’t see this as a debate at all, and even if it becomes one, it’s not great by any stretch.
I was a little glib in the OP, but what is the implication of this find that would lead anyone to claim that we should “accept the biblical account of the flood?” Again, I didn’t start this as a debate, so I don’t think the term straw man applies.
I did say that the whales drowned, but I also said that blow hole umbrellas could have spared them their fate. Are you going to take me to task for the Joker’s Fallacy?
I suspect you are trying to be ironic with your second sentence quoted above, but trying to make this into a formal debate where none was intended is a little pedantic, don’t you think?
Well, according to The Book of Fred 6:13 …Look Out For the Killer Whale!!!
You can’t make stuff up in any forum, SiXSwords. MPSIMS is not a free pass.
i bothered to read it. i will take in only three basic data from the report:
- the remains (not fossils) were 1/2 miles from the sea shore
- the site where the remains were found is presently desert
- remains are 2-7 million years old.
they got beached, they were buried in loose sediments , the seas receded, the desert did a good job at preserving the remains.
Having seen killer whales and dolphins perform in various marine parks, it seem to me that the tanks were fill with freshwater, not saltwater. YMMV.
Per the OP’s link–puff piece with a brainless tie-in to the creationism. Yet another reason to hate the Yahoo home page for coming off with all the sincerity of a game show host.
I’ve only seen a few performing ones as a kid, ( there’s no captive cetaceans left in the UK I believe) but I did get close enough to get splashed, and it was definitely salt Thanks for the comments and suggestions so far! I’m not sure if there is a definite answer; I know whales occasionally go up rivers, but rivers are hardly the ideal habitat for animals that size; most of them appear to be ill or injured already, and often die shortly afterwards, probably from the injuries.