I'm curious. A constant statement about things like this is that "there were ancient accounts of great floods that covered the Earth long before the Bible was written so the Bible must've repeated those". How do they know that those accounts do not repeat what was written about the Biblical flood and not the other way around? After all, IIRC no one has a clue how long ago Genesis was written.
Actually agree with what Dayton says. From my perspective of thinking the bible is mostly myth, a story like this seems to be an obvious ancestor of the Noah story. However if you take the Old Testament as true there is nothing to say this isn't based on the "real" story of Noah.
Genesis could only be written within a certain time frame, but the story could have been told for hundreds of years prior.
We have a pretty clear time window on when the ark story in Genesis was written, and on when it's supposed to have taken place given the many claims about time, generations and dynasties in the Bible. Of course you can disregard the latter and assume the story was told long before it was written down. That's just another way of saying that the Bible version id a retelling of a much older tradition, which is the point.
I tend to believe that the story is real in some form, but the time it happened is questionable. We know Gilgamesh is at least, what, 4-6 k years old? Add in the possibility that the story was passed down prior to that, it places the flood story from around 7-10 k years ago which coincides with the end of the last ice age. If it was a glacier that had melted or what not, then it is plausible that it would cause massive flooding in certain areas. If it were a natural land dam that broke, that also makes sense as well and lines up with the time frame. I think the story is likely true in some sense and I don't think it debunks the Bible.
Ummm no. More like there were ancient floods that covered lands inhabited by tribes or certain peoples. Definitely nothing 'global' If there was ever a global flood then it would likely have left some kind of evidence,... which it hasn't.
Doesn't everybody already know this? What would be more productive is if it was explained how the stories in Exodus are make-believe.
I was reading the Politically Incorrect Guide To the Bible. and it made a couple of points. 1) Most Christians seem to readily acknowledge that most of Revelations is written symbolically of events to come. If the end of the Bible is written that way then why wouldn't the beginning (Genesis) be written the same way? Symbolically. If the use of symbols in Revelations does not invalidate or debunk the Bible then why would it in Genesis. 2) The Old Testament often uses expansive, general language to describe big events. Like (don't remember the verses) describing a battle that "covered the world" (or something to that effect). Now naturally given other things describing the battle means it couldn't have been as big as that phrase implies. So perhaps the flood described in Genesis does describe a staggering huge flood and swamped all the "known" world at that time. That is all the villages, farms, and settlements in Mesopotamia or whereever I consider Genesis from Creation through the Tower of Babel and Revelation (after the letters to the 7 churches of Asia) to be symbolic in describing utterly incomprehensible events. I consider all that is in between (because it involves largely individuals) to be not symbolic but literal.
I wouldn't mind dealing with atheists so much if they didn't act so arrogant and have such an attitude of disdain for those who believe in God. You would think given they are in the minority and have been for several thousand years would give them some degree of humility.
If you think the problem depcited in Rick's post only bothers atheists, think again. Atheists should be and usually are least bothered by that argumentative quagmire, because we don't have to inhabit it.
Not picking on you here, but I'm amazed at how many Christians get the name of that book wrong. It's Revelation, no "s".
Id should have an "s" because it's plural - there is more than one revelation - there are a shitload of them.
Not the least of which is that the authors clearly got their hands on what, for their day, must have been some seriously high-quality LSD.
But if several authors had a revelation and they were compiled, then the book would be revelations, correct? I'm guessing because I have never had the opportunity to use the word in normal conversation.
Just wondering, would a global flood really produce "rough seas"? Because I though lots of the storm weather on oceans originated in weather patterns on the continents blowing out to sea. Like Atlantic hurricanes originating in winds blowing across Africa.
The weather across the terminator would be unbelievably bad, one side of the world would be hot and the other cold, the wind rushing from one to the other would be 1000's miles an hour.
IIRC, if all the Earths surface was level, uniformly the current water in the oceans would rise about a mile above it.
No, but if you believe the sky is a screen that holds the water back, and God opens it for rain, then he can dump out as much as he wants. A flat Earth also helps.
I would say that a true Christian would almost by definition have to believe in 1) A virgin birth 2) Restoring a dead person to life. Against that, believing in a global flood is hardly a stretch.
