Noah's Global Flood Never Occurred

Tim the plumber said:

But that's not the point. The point is that the Bible is wrong. That the Bible talks rubbish. Once you can accept that then I don't see how anyone can believe it's the work or was inspired by this God character.

By saying it's the general message that's important reduces the Bible to any collection of fables. Fine. But then why call it holly?

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Because many people need a religion (with codified teachings) to help them cope with the great questions of life and existence.

BmanMcfly said:

Yes, they believe it was not simply metaphor, and given that EVERY culture has a global flood story, it's either there was a real flood around the world, or it was a much older flood from when people lived in a much smaller area.

I tend to think the end of the ice age fits Noah's flood in that there was a global flood, raising oceans levels several hundred feet, there's possibility that the flooding would be quite sudden.





Ya, if we are forced into the position of a literal interpretation of the timelines... Sure. Then you are right, it couldn't have happened as the literalists would posit.



Oh, so, it also has to have killed all life except for 2 of every animal, and 5 humans.



Ya, and the work that became the Old Testament began for thousands of years as an oral tradition handed down through generations.

Who knows the details that got mistaken, etc... In that generational phone game



Because that's the only time where there was a flood significant enough to fit much of what was described.

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You continue to make claims but refuse to post any sources. Every culture does NOT have a global flood. Please show that this is not the case.

Second, all you're doing is saying "Yeah, well it didn't happen when the bible said it, but maybe it happened a really long time ago". This is why you can't argue with a creationist. When you prove him wrong, he just changes the goal posts to "It probably happened some other time that nobody knows about."

The authors of the bible were already never at most of the things they describe in the old testament, especially the flood, and you want to put 10's of thousands of years between them and the events and claim that makes the stories more believable. Lazy, lazy, lazy cop out.

RabidAlpaca said:

You continue to make claims but refuse to post any sources. Every culture does NOT have a global flood. Please show that this is not the case.

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http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths

A good start.

Second, all you're doing is saying "Yeah, well it didn't happen when the bible said it, but maybe it happened a really long time ago". This is why you can't argue with a creationist. When you prove him wrong, he just changes the goal posts to "It probably happened some other time that nobody knows about."

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Sounds more like you putting words in my mouth...

First, not a creationist.

Second, I'm not arguing the literal interpretation. You are.

Third, I'm taking the stories and looking for the evidence of where that would fit... And the last time there would have been global scale flooding is around 11000 years ago.

The authors of the bible were already never at most of the things they describe in the old testament, especially the flood, and you want to put 10's of thousands of years between them and the events and claim that makes the stories more believable. Lazy, lazy, lazy cop out.

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Is that wrong based off today's knowledge, or wrong based off the knowledge of those living thousands of years ago?

BmanMcfly said:

List of flood myths - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A good start.




Sounds more like you putting words in my mouth...

First, not a creationist.

Second, I'm not arguing the literal interpretation. You are.

Third, I'm taking the stories and looking for the evidence of where that would fit... And the last time there would have been global scale flooding is around 11000 years ago.




Is that wrong based off today's knowledge, or wrong based off the knowledge of those living thousands of years ago?

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It doesn't matter. If it was that far removed from the authors of the bible, it wasn't the same flood. The flood they described was recent, and to a specific era in time, referencing geography, city names, rulers, etc.

So seeing as how you even state you don't support the literal interpretation, we agree, the flood didn't happen. So let's stop there, you don't need to go off into the depths of time postulating a flood you can never prove.

RabidAlpaca said:

I find it rather difficult to believe at times that in today's day and age there are really religious people so ignorant as to claim that the bible is the literal truth, as we know for a fact that it is not. I'd like to take the absolute simplest example to refute: the global flood involving Noah and his ark.

Essentially, the world was wicked, but Noah and his family were righteous, so god wanted to wipe the slate clean and start over. It has been calculated many times by Christians that the global flood occurred around approximately 2300 B.C. If the Bible did one thing very well, it was list the lineages of families throughout the generations, so people were able to start at historical events that we know happened and work backwards. Here are the (Christian) sources showing the logic behind that, which I for the purpose of this thread will consider as correct. [SOURCE1] [SOURCE2]

The second thing to note is that the Bible claims the flood was global, and that it killed every man, woman, child and land based animal other than Noah's family and the animals on board.



Here is where the tremendous problem arises with the logic of this. A lot of things happened in the third millennium BC, but worldwide extinction is absolutely, positively, factually, not one of them. The world was teaming with a multitude of different societies consisting of different races, languages and cultures, and these societies existed before, during and after the alleged global flood. Instead of a global extermination, the world population the third millennium BC doubled from 15 million to 30 million.

(Note, this is not even close to all of the existing cultures at the time!)

The general Christian answer that I seem to get is that Noah's family quickly reproduced and replaced the world's population and things continued on, but such a traumatic disaster would take hundreds, if not thousands of years to recover from.

Are we really to believe that Noah's family had inbred sex with each other enough times to produce Chinese, Egyptians, South Americans, Africans, Northern Europeans, etc. all immediately, at which point they traveled quickly to all ends of the world, to continue those exterminated cultures exactly where they left off?

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Further reading:
https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/3rd_millennium_BC.html

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With an omnipotent God all things are possible.

Except women priests, check with the Pope.

BmanMcfly said:

Right, but where does civilization plant it's roots? Close to the water... It's just easier than trekking water by hand long distances.

So, how many towns and tribes were simply wiped off the map as the ice shelf began to melt? (Rhetorical)

You got the alarmists today panicked about a potential increase in water levels by a few inches. 300 ft up, when the people at the times world would have been the 24 km to the horizon, certainly some mountains could have disappeared temporarily.

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The best bet for the "Flood" was the Black Sea inundation, around 7,500 years ago, so goes the hypothesis, when rising Mediterranean sea levels overtopped the sill at the Bosphorus, and flooded the lower-lying lake with salt water. This massive waterfall still only moved the shoreline back at about 3 feet per day, but it would have been memorable nonetheless.

RabidAlpaca said:

It doesn't matter. If it was that far removed from the authors of the bible, it wasn't the same flood. The flood they described was recent, and to a specific era in time, referencing geography, city names, rulers, etc.

So seeing as how you even state you don't support the literal interpretation, we agree, the flood didn't happen. So let's stop there, you don't need to go off into the depths of time postulating a flood you can never prove.

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As I said, the stories that the authors of the bible had were the stories passed down as oral traditions for thousands of years.

It's PRESUMED that the dates match up to 2000-6000 years back, but as you point out, the timeline simply does not line up.

You then throw the baby out with the bath water saying that if the timeline doesn't match our presumptions then it never happened.

That's not necessarily the case...

Seriously, 2 people, or 5-6 people, is not enough genetic variability to sustain and build a population of billions. So, it's safe to say that either there is metaphor mixed in, or each individual mentioned was something greater, a tribe, a city, a clan, a family (or house)...

But, ya, it's pretty much a fact that the ocean level was around 300 ft lower during the last ice age.

Besides, who's to say that Noah's family was the only one spared?

BmanMcfly said:

But, ya, it's pretty much a fact that the ocean level was around 300 ft lower during the last ice age.

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Since the Mediterranean area was abundant with life at the time, I always wondered if there was no Mediterranean sea until the ice melt broke past and created the Straits of Gibraltar. Such a flood of water would create continuous evaporation and precipitation for some time as it filled to be the Mediterranean, cut the channel deep, and the momentum of water would be like a huge tsunami.

Lord of Planar said:

Since the Mediterranean area was abundant with life at the time, I always wondered if there was no Mediterranean sea until the ice melt broke past and created the Straits of Gibraltar. Such a flood of water would create continuous evaporation and precipitation for some time as it filled to be the Mediterranean, cut the channel deep, and the momentum of water would be like a huge tsunami.

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If I remember correctly that was one of the trials of Hercules was to split the strait of Gibraltar that allowed the ocean to fill the Mediterranean.

This is also a seemingly viable possibility.

RabidAlpaca said:

I find it rather difficult to believe at times that in today's day and age there are really religious people so ignorant as to claim that the bible is the literal truth, as we know for a fact that it is not. I'd like to take the absolute simplest example to refute: the global flood involving Noah and his ark.

Essentially, the world was wicked, but Noah and his family were righteous, so god wanted to wipe the slate clean and start over. It has been calculated many times by Christians that the global flood occurred around approximately 2300 B.C. If the Bible did one thing very well, it was list the lineages of families throughout the generations, so people were able to start at historical events that we know happened and work backwards. Here are the (Christian) sources showing the logic behind that, which I for the purpose of this thread will consider as correct. [SOURCE1] [SOURCE2]

The second thing to note is that the Bible claims the flood was global, and that it killed every man, woman, child and land based animal other than Noah's family and the animals on board.



Here is where the tremendous problem arises with the logic of this. A lot of things happened in the third millennium BC, but worldwide extinction is absolutely, positively, factually, not one of them. The world was teaming with a multitude of different societies consisting of different races, languages and cultures, and these societies existed before, during and after the alleged global flood. Instead of a global extermination, the world population the third millennium BC doubled from 15 million to 30 million.

(Note, this is not even close to all of the existing cultures at the time!)

The general Christian answer that I seem to get is that Noah's family quickly reproduced and replaced the world's population and things continued on, but such a traumatic disaster would take hundreds, if not thousands of years to recover from.

Are we really to believe that Noah's family had inbred sex with each other enough times to produce Chinese, Egyptians, South Americans, Africans, Northern Europeans, etc. all immediately, at which point they traveled quickly to all ends of the world, to continue those exterminated cultures exactly where they left off?

Further reading:
https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/3rd_millennium_BC.html

Click to expand...

The majority of Christians these days regard the flood story as allegorical or metaphorical. Still, there might be some truth to it. The area of land between the Tigris and the Euphrates, Mesopotamia, near the Persian Gulf, floods periodically, for example, When this happens one can look to the horizon in all directions and not see land. It would look like the whole world had flooded. It might be how the story got started.

ashurbanipal said:

One thing about this that has puzzled historians is that a massive flood is attested in a pretty wide range of early cultural myths. There are a couple of ways to handle this: there may have been one or two prehistoric floods which looked to people in roughly 5,000 B.C. like a global flood, and those legends were then disseminated over a couple thousand years so that, by the time Genesis was composed, it had to be included.

I like a different explanation. There's absolutely no evidence that a global flood ever happened. But water is heavy in symbolism. It seems to represent what we've come to call the subconscious mind (I think this is a misnomer, but that's an argument for another time), from which all kinds of fantastic images and forms emerge.

We know that there was a time in the prehistory of homo sapiens before there was anything resembling civilization. No art, no apparent religion or spiritual belief, no evidence of political structure, and so on. Then, roughly 35,000 B.C.E., everywhere around the world, we start seeing evidence of civilization springing forth almost fully formed. There are ritualized burials, not merely scattered pieces of art but vast cave complexes decorated with artistic representations of apparently well-developed mythologies, and so on. This is a puzzle to anthropologists. I suspect that the legends of a global flood represent a great shift in human consciousness that probably wasn't instantaneous, but somehow took place over just a few centuries.

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Major flooding occurs all over the world on a pretty regular (from the viewpoint of the life of the Earth, so over thousands or tens of thousands of years viewpoint) basis. For example, there is evidence enough that the Rocky Mountain area of the US floods every 5000-7000 years, alternating between freshwater and saltwater. This is easily seen in the fossil record, particularly from fossils found in Fossil Butte, WY. This flood covers from Canada all the way down to Mexico, including good portions of, if not the entirety of, states out west like Utah, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, Nevada, Montana, and several others. If there were tribes of Native Americans living in these areas or near these areas when these floods occurred, it absolutely would look to them like the whole world was flooding, particularly if they had no clue of how big the world actually was.

But, these floods generally don't take place all at the same time. I don't think there is any place where every area of the planet has an overlap with their floods with every other culture existing at that time.

LowDown said:

The majority of Christians these days regard the flood story as allegorical or metaphorical. Still, there might be some truth to it. The area of land between the Tigris and the Euphrates, Mesopotamia, near the Persian Gulf, floods periodically, for example, When this happens one can look to the horizon in all directions and not see land. It would look like the whole world had flooded. It might be how the story got started.

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And there is little doubt that this is actually what led to the story with most people who think about this story, whether Christian or not. But there are still some Christians out there who do think the story is completely literal as written, not just an allegory or metaphor. (This is actually even talked about in an episode of Psych.) I've argued with guys and girls my own age who swear that the story of Noah is completely literal and that there was a worldwide flood, not simply a large regional flood.

Heck, lets face it, if we didn't have the communications abilities available to us and we were hit by flooding, the vast majority of anyone who survived wouldn't be able to judge how much flooding had actually occurred, especially if they happened to be in a valley. Even if the eventually determined how much of their own country/continent had flooded, they would be hardpressed to make it across the ocean to determine how much of any of those countries may have been flooded.

BmanMcfly said:

As I said, the stories that the authors of the bible had were the stories passed down as oral traditions for thousands of years.

It's PRESUMED that the dates match up to 2000-6000 years back, but as you point out, the timeline simply does not line up.

You then throw the baby out with the bath water saying that if the timeline doesn't match our presumptions then it never happened.

That's not necessarily the case...

Seriously, 2 people, or 5-6 people, is not enough genetic variability to sustain and build a population of billions. So, it's safe to say that either there is metaphor mixed in, or each individual mentioned was something greater, a tribe, a city, a clan, a family (or house)...

But, ya, it's pretty much a fact that the ocean level was around 300 ft lower during the last ice age.

Click to expand...

What I find fascinating is that you admit it was a story passed down by generations over thousands of years, and yet you still claim that the end story would match the original. Did you never play the telephone game as a child? The message never comes out right even after 1 or 2 people, much less thousands.

Then, as a hail mary to save it, you post a link of local floods from all over the world then claim "It must've been one of those."

I'm sorry, but I've refuted all of your points already and unless you can come up with something else we're done.

BmanMcfly said:

If I remember correctly that was one of the trials of Hercules was to split the strait of Gibraltar that allowed the ocean to fill the Mediterranean.

This is also a seemingly viable possibility.

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Considering the things you've told me you believe, it's not all surprising that you consider this also a viable explanation.

LowDown said:

The majority of Christians these days regard the flood story as allegorical or metaphorical. Still, there might be some truth to it. The area of land between the Tigris and the Euphrates, Mesopotamia, near the Persian Gulf, floods periodically, for example, When this happens one can look to the horizon in all directions and not see land. It would look like the whole world had flooded. It might be how the story got started.

Click to expand...

Actually, the majority of American christians will tell you that this literally happened. That however does raise an important point. Who's dumber, the people who believe something so ridiculous happened or the people who know it didn't happen but still base their entire lives on the book that lied to them in the first place?

A local flood does not meet any of the qualifiers of the great flood. The bible made it very clear that god said it would be global and kill every living human on earth other than Noah and his family. If we start questioning what the bible says god said, doesn't your whole religion kind of fall apart? It's these stories that build the entire basis for the "legitimacy" of christianity, and apparently they're metaphors.

Though I do find it cute that christians say things like "The bible is the immutable, consistent word of god..." then when confronted with a contradiction "Except those contradictions, those were metaphors."

Lord of Planar said:

Besides, who's to say that Noah's family was the only one spared?

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God, according to the bible. If you don't accept that then you reject what the bible clearly states, plain and simple.

Here's like 30 different translations of the bible saying the exact same thing. (The previous verse, Gensis 7:20 may provide some context)

So most scholars since the 20th C figure there were 4 main writers of the Torah, the earliest being Jahwist. This has been rather definitively dated at 7th-5th BCE. That means this flood would've taken place a whopping 1600+ years earlier. Why wait so long? Why should we believe any of this horse manure? The writing style itself is so different that it's clearly at least 2 writers, plus at least 1 redactor who very likely edited it beyond recognition.

The OP did well at explaining why this flood was impossible, but one more consideration if i may. The building of the tower of Babel supposedly followed. So not only was Noah very busy with the inbreeding, but everyone spoke a single language (i'm sure thumpers believe it was English) > YHWH scatters everyone and mixes the languages. Two major problems:

1. How is the flood regional, as some here claim, with such emphasis on gathering and scattering and language? The whole point is to suggest that the *entire planet* spoke one language to even further demonstrate this god's power. Also, the author knew he was lying and tried to account for why the world around him had such varied language and culture so soon after his fake global genocide.

2. The Babel story was likely just inspired by or was the tower Etemanaki. This would put it around 6th BCE. There is quite a lot of evidence of this - no external mention of "Babel tower" prior to 6th BCE and much after. So apologists may claim the "Moses" character told of a flood 1600 years prior, but what happens in that 1600 years before Babel? How did Moses basically eyewitness Etemanaki then within 100 years at most all those people scatter to populate the entire known world? Simplest explanation: He lifted the ark fable from other flood myths and took the current tower at Babel and lied about it being built way back by noah's great-grandson, adding all the other bs about scattering of people and language.

Manc Skipper said:

The best bet for the "Flood" was the Black Sea inundation, around 7,500 years ago, so goes the hypothesis, when rising Mediterranean sea levels overtopped the sill at the Bosphorus, and flooded the lower-lying lake with salt water. This massive waterfall still only moved the shoreline back at about 3 feet per day, but it would have been memorable nonetheless.

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I don't think it had to come from an actual event, or "noah's ark" could've been lifted from other stories based on some memorable event. There are so many flood myths prior to 6th BCE, when Genesis was likely started. Some even involve an ark and the whole planet is wiped out except a few humans.

List of flood myths - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

BmanMcfly said:

Ok, a) why do they figure the global flood happened in 4500 years ago?

B) other cultures flood stories talk about survivors, running to the hills and high lands.

C) who even says the bibles events are in strict chronological order?


Realistically, at the end of the last ice age, when the polar ice sheet went down, what past New York?

The oceans would have been hundreds of feet shallower, the flood in that case would be
A) global
B) catastrophic
C) have very little remaining evidence

So, if we are talking, which is it 11000 bc or 11000 years ago?

That's a better place to look for the flood.

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The bible says that "noah's great-grandson" nimrod controlled a sizeable babylonian realm including Accad, which was destroyed around 2200 BCE. That makes the timeline fit rather well if you ask me. So to answer your last question, neither. The best place to look for the flood is in one man's mind, and he was probably high at the time.

chromium said:

So most scholars since the 20th C figure there were 4 main writers of the Torah, the earliest being Jahwist. This has been rather definitively dated at 7th-5th BCE. That means this flood would've taken place a whopping 1600+ years earlier. Why wait so long? Why should we believe any of this horse manure? The writing style itself is so different that it's clearly at least 2 writers, plus at least 1 redactor who very likely edited it beyond recognition.

The OP did well at explaining why this flood was impossible, but one more consideration if i may. The building of the tower of Babel supposedly followed. So not only was Noah very busy with the inbreeding, but everyone spoke a single language (i'm sure thumpers believe it was English) > YHWH scatters everyone and mixes the languages. Two major problems:

1. How is the flood regional, as some here claim, with such emphasis on gathering and scattering and language? The whole point is to suggest that the *entire planet* spoke one language to even further demonstrate this god's power. Also, the author knew he was lying and tried to account for why the world around him had such varied language and culture so soon after his fake global genocide.

2. The Babel story was likely just inspired by or was the tower Etemanaki. This would put it around 6th BCE. There is quite a lot of evidence of this - no external mention of "Babel tower" prior to 6th BCE and much after. So apologists may claim the "Moses" character told of a flood 1600 years prior, but what happens in that 1600 years before Babel? How did Moses basically eyewitness Etemanaki then within 100 years at most all those people scatter to populate the entire known world? Simplest explanation: He lifted the ark fable from other flood myths and took the current tower at Babel and lied about it being built way back by noah's great-grandson, adding all the other bs about scattering of people and language.

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Exactly! The events of genesis are absolutely, positively impossible. It could not have occurred the way it was described.

I guess we could say this myth is:



Or as Penn and Teller would say:

Gathomas88 said:

The Old Testament is generally not held to be on the same level as the New Testament where accuracy is concerned, as most of the New Testament is made up of the word for word sayings of Christ, who is held to have been God himself on earth.

While they might've been "spiritually inspired" by him, the writers of the Old Testament did not have as direct of a relationship with God as the Apostles later would.

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So was the OT. You just don't believe in it as much. Not only did Jesus refer to it, but the OT God walked around in the flesh and even haggled with humans. "Moses" talked him out of slaughtering the disobedient Hebrews after the exodus.

Gathomas88 said:

Again, I'd argue that anyone who defends the story in such a dogmatically literal sense in the first place is missing the forest for the trees anyway. The point of the story isn't the flood, but what the flood represents. In that regard, the Biblical story readily serves the purpose it was meant to serve.

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What is it meant to represent exactly? That it's kosher to kill every living thing on the planet? Maybe i miss the point but it seems like Hitler had more compassion than that. He at least had a fondness for dogs.

Gathomas88 said:

The "flood" was neither global in origin, nor does the Bible even necessarily state that it has to be viewed as such in definitive terms. The meaning of the Hebrew word used in the original texts is actually more akin to "land" (i.e. the 'land' of Noah's people) than that used to denote the whole of the world. Besides, as I've already pointed out, we have plenty of evidence for "floods" and other natural catastrophes in humanity's past, on both a regional and even global scale, which might've very well fit the bill where the Biblical account is concerned.

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Except there's no evidence of them wiping out every species at the whim of some maniacal deity, only tells us where the author got the idea from, then he added some lesson that eludes me. Could be "obey or die," not very consistent with the NT Jesus if you ask me.

Gathomas88 said:

As to the matter of homosexual behavior, the key basis for Christian opposition to it isn't even found in the Old Testament anyway, but the new. There, it is found both in the words of Christ himself, as well as those of the Apostles.

New Testament Scriptures dealing with homosexuality

Extensive condemnation of homosexuality is also found in the writings of early Church philosophers removed from the Biblical texts as well.

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There you go with that literalism and citing from the OT... Christ himself also condemned the rich, rescued a prostitute, and gave out free health care. Remember to support socialism then

Here let me try this and see if you get how offensive this crap is. "All opposite sex relationships are condemned. Heterosexuality is a depraved condition brought on by a sinful nature. You need to pray to be changed through the power of God. Too many cities are cesspools of this sexual immorality. Sinful human nature is always an enemy to God. No one should expect to escape the wrath of God. Heterosexuality remains a sin worthy of death. It's good to expose the psychosis of those who are defiled and commit abominations. If you reject that, mental perversion will take root. It would be a deathnell for the church to admit unrepentant heterosexuals. the Word of God firmly establishes once and for all the sinfulness of heterosexuality, a spiritual aberration, a result of the fallen nature of man, a disease of the soul. It produces nothing life giving, in essence opposite of the nature of God who is life. Therefore it “worketh” or produces abomination which is death."

RabidAlpaca said:

Actually, the majority of American christians will tell you that this literally happened. That however does raise an important point. Who's dumber, the people who believe something so ridiculous happened or the people who know it didn't happen but still base their entire lives on the book that lied to them in the first place?

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This just shows that without faith there is no understanding. Secular types who try to interpret scripture just make a hash of things.

Holy scripture is what believers make of it. If you want to know what scripture means to a believer then ask him. Coming up with your own half baked, ignorant interpretations of what you think the text should mean just makes for a tiresome exercise. We should just agree that you have no respect for our beliefs, and we have no respect for what you think. Your arguments are sophomoric.

RabidAlpaca said:

What I find fascinating is that you admit it was a story passed down by generations over thousands of years, and yet you still claim that the end story would match the original. Did you never play the telephone game as a child? The message never comes out right even after 1 or 2 people, much less thousands.

Then, as a hail mary to save it, you post a link of local floods from all over the world then claim "It must've been one of those."

I'm sorry, but I've refuted all of your points already and unless you can come up with something else we're done.



Considering the things you've told me you believe, it's not all surprising that you consider this also a viable explanation.



Actually, the majority of American christians will tell you that this literally happened. That however does raise an important point. Who's dumber, the people who believe something so ridiculous happened or the people who know it didn't happen but still base their entire lives on the book that lied to them in the first place?

A local flood does not meet any of the qualifiers of the great flood. The bible made it very clear that god said it would be global and kill every living human on earth other than Noah and his family. If we start questioning what the bible says god said, doesn't your whole religion kind of fall apart? It's these stories that build the entire basis for the "legitimacy" of christianity, and apparently they're metaphors.

Though I do find it cute that christians say things like "The bible is the immutable, consistent word of god..." then when confronted with a contradiction "Except those contradictions, those were metaphors."




God, according to the bible. If you don't accept that then you reject what the bible clearly states, plain and simple.

Here's like 30 different translations of the bible saying the exact same thing. (The previous verse, Gensis 7:20 may provide some context)

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If I take from the Torah, Genesis 6:7 and run it through Google translate, I get this:

M LORD said, I will destroy - the person who - I have created from the face of the earth, both man - beast, until - creeping thing - birds of the air: for consolation, that you did.

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LowDown said:

This just shows that without faith there is no understanding. Secular types who try to interpret scripture just make a hash of things.

Holy scripture is what believers make of it. If you want to know what scripture means to a believer then ask him. Coming up with your own half baked, ignorant interpretations of what you think the text should mean just makes for a tiresome exercise. We should just agree that you have no respect for our beliefs, and we have no respect for what you think. Your arguments are sophomoric.

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So first you say that holy scripture is what believers make of it, that stories that get disproven were just metaphors, but my interpretation as a hardcore believer of 22 years of my life is ignorant and half baked.

So what is it, is the bible an objective moral truth, or is it subjective to every believer? If you had a friend that constantly lied to you, would you trust their statements on "faith" in the future? Or would you perhaps be a little skeptical of it?

Lord of Planar said:

If I take from the Torah, Genesis 6:7 and run it through Google translate, I get this:

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LOL. Screw 30+ translations that have been translated and scrutinized by biblical experts, let's take google translate's ambiguous translation as proof that all the others were mistranslated.

RabidAlpaca said:

So first you say that holy scripture is what believers make of it, that stories that get disproven were just metaphors, but my interpretation as a hardcore believer of 22 years of my life is ignorant and half baked.

So what is it, is the bible an objective moral truth, or is it subjective to every believer? If you had a friend that constantly lied to you, would you trust their statements on "faith" in the future? Or would you perhaps be a little skeptical of it?



LOL. Screw 30+ translations that have been translated and scrutinized by biblical experts, let's take google translate's ambiguous translation as proof that all the others were mistranslated.

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Just showing another method.

Anyone wanting to know the truth will look at the torah and note that there are different words translated to the same in English. These variations are rarely distinguished in English.

Adam for example. After the creation, a word meaning "man" is used. It isn't until the story with Cain and Able that this is a different word, the proper name, Adam.

Examples go on and on.

RabidAlpaca said:

A local flood makes absolutely no sense, and you've been absolutely incapable of reconciling that with the scripture.

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Nonsense. I've already provided it. The Hebrew word used in the story in the oldest texts isn't even "world." It is "land," which is much more akin to a specific region or country.

Even taking things literally, there is no real evidence to support a "global" flood.

Again, you need to stop relying on faulty modern English translations of ancient texts.

I would think you'd be relieved to know that your god didn't kill millions of innocent women and children just to prove a point. The author of Genesis wasn't even there, so even he didn't know if it happened or not.

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God ultimately decides when, where, and how all of us die. A flood would be no different than anything else.

Besides, if one believes in the existence of the soul (as Christianity and Judaism do), physical death isn't real death anyway. The soul continues to live on afterwards.

And about homosexuality, hey, the bible was pretty straightforward describing a global flood destroying mankind, and you claim that was just a metaphor, so maybe when Jesus said homosexuality is wrong, it was also just a metaphor. That's what's fun about religion isn't it? You can just change and mold it however YOU want.

The fact is, most christians DO believe that the story of Noah was global and that it did happen. You've gone into religionist defense mode because I showed the bible couldn't have happened the way it was described, so you just move the goal posts to something I can't prove. "Well, there were floods throughout earth's history, so maybe it was one of those other ones we don't know about. The ambiguous scientists I like to refer to all agree."

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There is a difference between some colorful ancient story of unknown authorship that is likely speaking half in metaphor talking about a "flood," and God himself in the flesh, or one of the men who studied under him, telling you in absolutely no uncertain terms that certain behaviors are sinful, and should be avoided.

For the record, most educated Christians haven't believed in a literal "global flood" for two thousand years at least. Even going back as far as St. Augustine in the 4th Century AD, scholars were expressing a lot of skepticism concerning the idea. The RCC has also never held it to be a point of Dogma.

Considering the fact that, at more than 1 billion followers, the RCC makes up more than half of modern Christendom, that's most of your target demographic accounted for right then and there.

Just about the only people who insist on adhering to an absolutely strict and literal interpretation of Genesis are the followers of hard-line fundamentalist Protestant sects. Frankly, the only reason they do so is that, in lieu of any meaningful hierarchy or historical tradition, they have nothing besides the Bible to work off of.

More organized sects like Catholicism don't really have that problem. They have always held the Bible to be of only secondary importance to Church law for that exact reason.

Tim the plumber said:

But that's not the point. The point is that the Bible is wrong. That the Bible talks rubbish. Once you can accept that then I don't see how anyone can believe it's the work or was inspired by this God character.

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No, that is simply the foregone conclusion you arrived at before the conversation even started, and are now subsequently trying to steer it towards.

There is nothing whatsoever wrong with the Bible, so long as one accepts it within the proper context.

It is interesting to sit on the outside and see all of the different variations, and contortions individuals go through in order to make the supposed word of god make sense to them personally. Local flood, dating is off, metaphoric, ice age, translation errors - and these are just a few of the samples from this thread alone.