Hey - perhaps the flood wasn't a flood

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Willum
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Hey - perhaps the flood wasn't a flood

Post #1

Post by Willum »

So this topic can be made sport of, or taken seriously, but it will be hard to keep track of which, so use humor or irony markers please.

What if the flood was the last Ice Age?
Water would cover the Earth to the tops of the mountains, easily covering them.
What if the Ark was a warm colossal lodge?
What if it occurred in many places in the world, but only survived/was recorded in Noah's tale?

nobspeople
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Re: Hey - perhaps the flood wasn't a flood

Post #2

Post by nobspeople »

Willum wrote: Fri Apr 29, 2022 9:10 am So this topic can be made sport of, or taken seriously, but it will be hard to keep track of which, so use humor or irony markers please.

What if the flood was the last Ice Age?
Water would cover the Earth to the tops of the mountains, easily covering them.
What if the Ark was a warm colossal lodge?
What if it occurred in many places in the world, but only survived/was recorded in Noah's tale?
I would think the writers speaking of water would know the difference of that and ice but, being in a warmer climate (at least in the biblical areas) they may have never seen ice before.
That said, if god caused a flood, one would expect god to tell the writers of the flood what's rain and what's snow/ice. But then again, god does things that seem illogical, immoral and just strange if biblical stories are to be believed fully.

I would think it difficult, if the flood was an ice age, for Noah and his family to live through such a long period.

The last sentence seems the most likely of them all. But I seem to recall other cultures having written and or told about a similar story - just seems Noah's is the most popular in our 'cultural circle', so his might not be the only tale available.
Have a great, potentially godless, day!

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Re: Hey - perhaps the flood wasn't a flood

Post #3

Post by TRANSPONDER »

What is the Biblical Ark was an adaptation of a Babylonian legend?
What if the entire earth was never, ever, totally covered in water?
What if neither a floating hulk or a mountain -top Wickiup could hold enough breeding -pairs of all the global species?

And what if human fears of being wiped out by natural causes (storms, fire, flood) led to a lot of very different disaster - folk - stories with extinction by water being a first story - telling option?

What if the Biblical Flood never happened, the Durupinar Ark is just a boat shaped rock outcrop (the Ark, Sumerian or Biblical was not boat -shaped) and the NAMI Ark was a scam pure and simple, just as the flogging of chunks of pitch to gullible tourists (as recounted by Josephus) was such a nice little earner in the old days that the Ark was put on a local coin (wagged about by one apologist as evidence that it was true). And that only Genesis -literalists persist in trying to argue Ark feasibility (when a total lack of food after the Flood would round off the otherwise total extinction . Remember the Unwritten Rule ;) The Ark and Flood must work naturally - You cannot have God wave a magic wand, otherwise the Trap (1) is sprung: It must work in accordance with Science, even if Science is twisted and tortured into an unrecognisable form. "Yeah...maybe there were ledges up on the mountain with mud so the seeds could be sown and in a few weeks grass would grow to feed the sheep so the carnivores could be fed...."

"And when all the sheep had been fed to the carnivores?"

"Well the Bible says it happened so there was some answer, even if I don't know what it was." I swear that was an actual argument made to me. If I made one up it'd be like...'Where did I make the claim that all the sheep had been fed to the carnivores? I made no such claim!!"

(1) Then why would God need a Flood at all? He can just do a Miracle.

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Re: Hey - perhaps the flood wasn't a flood

Post #4

Post by nobspeople »

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #3]
Then why would God need a Flood at all? He can just do a Miracle.
A good point I've made several times in the past. Seems like god, after 'the creation', relies on very 'human-constructs' to do his bidding:
floods
locusts
wars
But one person's miracle is another's 'meh' I suspect we'll hear?

I would expect such a being to not only be able to do the undoable (which it did when it created 'all that is') but do things that blatantly boggle the human mind. But it resorts to floods and locusts? Maybe it's just me, but I'd expect something more impressive/less mundane than a bunch o' bugs and the like.
But I suppose, some have lower expectations of their deities.... :?
Have a great, potentially godless, day!

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Re: Hey - perhaps the flood wasn't a flood

Post #5

Post by TRANSPONDER »

Well, it's rather like that thing about coloring the sheep by tying them to a striped stick. This does not work. Maybe to the goat -herders of the time it looked like it could work. It shows that the myths and legends of the time were not reflections of the Deep Thought of a divine being, let alone a creator of everything, including Indeterminacy, Quarks and the Higgs -Boson, but the severely limited imagination of the tribal story -tellers of the time.

Cue..God does a miracle and the striped stick become some symbolic excuse or other. Jehosaphat or whoever had to show that he believed before God would colour the sheep for him.

Yeah...we are familiar with the excuses that enable denial at any stretch of the first option conclusion that we are dealing with mythology here, not history. And that is another rooming elephant that Some things in the Bible can't be trusted. So what CAN be trusted, especially when there are doubts about it? I already raised doubts about the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem even though it's historical. It made more sense that Sennacherib offered surrender terms and Hezekiah took them. Which is what the Assyrian record says. But that clobbers the Biblical miracle of the Assyrian army being smit.

Otseng argued well, but the elephant in the room was always that giving credit to God for a miracle was the motivation for a Biblical spin on the actual event. And we already have too many examples of untrustworthy miracle -claims in the Bible.

Which is probably why the Inerrantists (TM :P ) deny everything and desperately try to make Genesis work rather than give up and let the first cracks appear in the wall. Yes, it must lift an intolerable burden of trying to believe laughable non -science like the hydroplate theory, even without having to pretend they hadn't heard the debunks of Genesis (sea beds on mountain tops, fossil stratification, meanders in the Grand Canyon). The Faithbased Denial is strong in this one, but I could not live with knowing that I was pretending that debunking evidence didn't exist.

Even efforts like adapting science to Genesis :D like divide the age of the Universe into 7 and call each a day. Then you have to ignore what the Bible says; each day was light and dark, morning and evening, and sun and moon were made to mark them. An atheist points that out and what does the apologist do? Drop that apologetic? Pretend they never heard it? I would hate to have to do that to my brain.

So whether it's innerantist denial, Cafeteria Christians clinging to what hasn't been debunked just yet or trying to fiddle the Bible to fit the facts, I say again, I am so grateful that I can follow the evidence wherever it leads, and I don't have to keep lying to myself.

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