I have no objection to people who believe the Bible is metaphorical or mythology. There is plenty of evidence that shows such a thing occurred in many different cultures. Its the literalists and the picking-and-choosing types that I find fault with.
Ya, I agree... you can only have so much bible talk... when you start making points by quoting verses it starts pushing things a little far.
Yes. Floods happen. No one denies that.
Yes, but this was a massive flooding...
What is denied is that
1) a man built a wooden boat bigger than is possible by engineers today.
How have people proven the size of a 'cubit'? I mean, that could be a meter, it could be 7.5 inches, I'd really have to see how the measurement was produced.
Further, the stories of the bible, were stories that were told for unknown generations PRIOR to them being put into actual writing.
Then it also matters if "God" in this story is a carnal being,
2) all the animals of the world lived on it
Well... 2 of every kind of animal. But like you said, the scale of 'the whole world' had to have been much different then today. So, I figure 2 of every animal...
3) the entire world was flooded to the tops of mountains
That depends on the region of the world, because in my hometown the 24 km around the highest mountain is lower then the tallest building... so it wouldn't take nearly as much for my 'world' to disappear.
4) the world and its animals was repopulated by the survivors
What if "Noah" isn't a singular person... but a 'tribe' of people, or a 'nation' of people?? And that 'tribe' or 'nation' survived 600 years... that at least gets past the incest factor... UNLESS of course there were survivors that simply weren't accounted for... not like that would get mentioned by that point.
Oh... 900... I thought it was Adam that lived to be 900... If we're talking about a plurality of people taking on a name, then it becomes entirely possible for a group of individuals to survive that long. The apocryphal book of Adam and Eve shouldn't count because it was written back in like Roman empire times.
Have you considered the possibility that maybe 'god' is actually an extra-terrestrial life form?? That he tried to teach man about the universe, but that humans weren't able to grasp that much yet?
Now, if that is the case, and there really was this massive global scaled flood, it's a pretty safe bet that any technology would be destroyed, and if you think about it, if you went back in time with a few technological 'toys' you could convince cavemen that you are the god of fire with a friggin bic lighter.
At that point, why not accept that "God" is symbolic for natural forces that acted over billions of years?
I believe the TRUE God is the 'symbol' for the natural forces... BUT, while I know the bible texts (for the most part, the bible is an overall interesting read, but so difficult), I believe that the 'truths' in the bible have been distorted beyond recognition over those thousands or tens of thousands of years.
Just pretending that there's this father figure in the sky that's inordinately interested in your sex life is absurd.
Now, consider that it's not that 'god is concerned' because he wants chastity... God doesn't care if you sleep with 1 woman or a thousand women. What this is is a WARNING that wrongful sex HAS CONSEQUENCES, call it karma, or whatever, the effect is the same... that when you have sex with someone for the wrong reasons then you are inviting the problems associated with it... STD's, pregnancies with the wrong woman, which also hurts THEIR lives, it ruins families, gets people killed if one person is cheating and caught...
There are not many things in the bible, or any other religious text that I've taken any interest in, that don't share roughly the same ideologies at the core, but have REAL carnal consequences, in some form, psychological consequences, physical consequences... but none the less they are there.
Just like sometimes people are spared because of their spiritual purity...
(the church at the bottom all survived while praying...)
There is no REAL explanation for these things... whether it's a person, or natural forces or energy... or infinite intelligence, maybe all of the above.