Board index ‹ Noah's Ark & the Flood

[Abernathy]

Does anyone believe Noah’s Ark is true where God made a mistake and needed to murdered many innocent people to clean up his mess? God decided that the world God created was filled with bad people and needed to cleanse the world. So instead of just making all the bad people disappear, God chose to drown everyone including innocent children and animals that were not on Noah’s Ark. I dont know why anyone would believe this story is true and if not, then how much of the Bible should be believed?

This question comes after reading about the Ark Encounter Park in Kentucky, US, that recently celebrated over one million paid attendance. The Ark Encounter shows dinosaurs in cages in Noah's Ark. Apparently many people do believe this is true.

[jimwalton]

I believe Noah's Ark is true, but after that you haven't said anything I agree with.

> ...where God made a mistake

No, this is not the biblical account. In the biblical account, it was humanity that made the mistake (Gn. 6.5). In Gn. 6.6 it says "the Lord was grieved." When this word occurs elsewhere in the OT, it almost always has to do with God changing his will concerning a future plan of action, not admission of a mistake of a past action.

God has suffered personal loss, and his "ledgers" were put out of balance by humanity's corruption. The people had refused to balance the account, so to speak, by their repentance, and God couldn't allow the books to remain skewed. Here God is auditing the accounts because he had made humankind, but humans had made so many mistakes the situation had to be corrected.

> ...needed to murder many innocent people to clean up his mess.

No, this is not the biblical account. Gn. 6.5 says man's wickedness had become so great that eery inclination of the thoughts of his heart were only evil all the time. In what part of this sentence do you find "innocence"?

> So instead of just making all the bad people disappear...

??? Make them *disappear*? What does this mean? A human being is a created in the image of God and he or she has a soul. What do mean *make them disappear*? You can't just "poof" away an eternal soul (if you want to know what the Bible teaches).

> God chose to drown everyone including innocent children

What makes you think the children were innocent? Have you seen the news about Somalia, where even the children are being taught to murder? ISIS, where the children are being trained as killers? In addition, it is the teaching of the Bible that none of us is innocent. We are all born in sin and separated from God. But any baby or child who dies gets a free ticket to heaven, so where is the alleged brutality on God's part?

> I dont know why anyone would believe this story is true and if not, then how much of the Bible should be believed?

As you can see, at just about every level you are misconstruing and misunderstanding the story. I believe the story is true, and I believe, then, that the Bible should be believed.

> The Ark Encounter

Full disclosure: I don't believe that the Flood was global, but massively regional (continental?).

> The Ark Encounter shows dinosaurs in cages in Noah's Ark.

I don't believe that dinosaurs were around at the time of the ark.

[Drum Corps]

Why did he create people knowing they would become evil?

[jimwalton]

For the same reason human parents have children knowing that there is always the possibility that the child might be disobedient, might turn against them one day, might get in an accident and die, or might be born with or some day contract a fatal disease. We want more children. We want to share our love. We want to have a love relationship with people who are "from us." So he created out of love.

Secondly, we understand that one of the attributes of God is that he is uncreated. Anything created is, therefore, not God. And if anything is not God, it is therefore susceptible to damage, wrong, and bad choices. In other words, it is impossible for God to have created a being that didn't have the possibility of becoming evil. Free will necessitates, well, free will.

Third, God knew that whatever evil bad men could perpetrate, God could redeem it if they would just let him. So even if God knew they would become evil, He could pay the price to make it right for any who would accept the fix.

[Abernathy]

Do you think God knew that almost everyone in the entire world were going to be evil and God would have no choice but to flood the earth and kill all of bad people?

Is a newborn infant also not innocent and needed to be drowned? What about all the animals including puppies and kittens?

[jimwalton]

The Bible says that God is omniscient, and therefore he knew that people would turn against him. He also knew that anyone who turned to him would be saved. The people had a choice, and they chose against God and therefore chose their own destiny.

> Is a newborn infant also not innocent and needed to be drowned?

Sometimes people get caught up in the "shrapnel" of an event. Innocent people get shot at a place like, say, Las Vegas. But in the case of babies and the Flood, as I said in the post, they had an automatic free ticket to heaven, so for them it's not a punishment at all.

> What about all the animals including puppies and kittens?

You're really milking this one, eh? Even the death of innocent animals teaches us important lessons about avoiding evil in the future. Innocent animals are even dying in the California fires. We learn about heartbreak, about danger, suffering, compassion, and perhaps better ways to go about things, even when animals die.

[Bombs Away]

> No, this is not the biblical account. In the biblical account, it was humanity that made the mistake (Gn. 6.5). In Gn. 6.6 it says "the Lord was grieved." When this word occurs elsewhere in the OT, it almost always has to do with God changing his will concerning a future plan of action, not admission of a mistake of a past action. God has suffered personal loss, and his "ledgers" were put out of balance by humanity's corruption. The people had refused to balance the account, so to speak, by their repentance, and God couldn't allow the books to remain skewed. Here God is auditing the accounts because he had made humankind, but humans had made so many mistakes the situation had to be corrected.

So by playing a word game, God maintains his omniscient status.

> No, this is not the biblical account. Gn. 6.5 says man's wickedness had become so great that eery inclination of the thoughts of his heart were only evil all the time. In what part of this sentence do you find "innocence"?

It doesn't matter what the "biblical account" is if the logistics amount to what original poster said. Noah and every living thing on the ark are what survived. You're telling me there wasn't a single innocent person in the world that wasn't on the ark?

> ??? Make them disappear? What does this mean? A human being is a created in the image of God and he or she has a soul. What do mean make them disappear? You can't just "poof" away an eternal soul (if you want to know what the Bible teaches).

God can bring it into existence, he can take it out of existence too. He also could have just changed the wicked hearts of man to be good. God is God, he can do anything he wants to do.

> What makes you think the children were innocent? Have you seen the news about Somalia, where even the children are being taught to murder? ISIS, where the children are being trained as killers? In addition, it is the teaching of the Bible that none of us is innocent. We are all born in sin and separated from God. But any baby or child who dies gets a free ticket to heaven, so where is the alleged brutality on God's part?

Justifying the drowning of children too uphold God's imagine is foul. Where's the brutality on God's part? You just suggested to us those children weren't innocent since corrupted people were teaching them things that they had no way of knowing any better. They're in hell now. That's the brutality of God's action.

[jimwalton]

> So by playing a word game, God maintains his omniscient status

This is an odd comment. It's not a word game at all. If you want to have a conversation about the words, then we have to be honest about the meaning of the words. In other words, semantics matters.

> You're telling me there wasn't a single innocent person in the world that wasn't on the ark?

The only hard evidence I have to go by is the Genesis account that says there were no other innocent people. Even Noah wasn't innocent (Gen. 9), but he walked with God, was a man of faith, and obeyed God. That's what is required. If you have hard evidence to the contrary, I'd be pleased to read it. I invite you to share what you have.

> God can bring it into existence, he can take it out of existence too.

God can't "take it out of existence." It's a living soul (Gn. 2.7). It's eternal. God's omnipotence doesn't mean he can do anything. There are a lot of things that God can't do (He can't make a square circle either). God can't take eternal beings out of existence.

> He also could have just changed the wicked hearts of man to be good.

No he can't. He can't interfere with the free will of man, or it isn't free will. God is interested in a love relationship. Love that is forced isn't love. These are all contradictions, and God isn't a contradiction. God can't change wicked hearts unless those people choose to allow him. It's an option available to all of us (that God would change our hearts), but God can't act until we give him the green light.

> God is God, he can do anything he wants to do.

This is simply false. Omnipotence doesn't mean God can do anything he wants to. God can't sin, he can't lie, he can't do anything contradictory to his character, he can't do anything absurd, he can't change the past, and he can't interfere with man's free will. God's omnipotence means he can do whatever is an appropriate use of his power, and the appropriate use of his power can never be frustrated. But he certainly can't do anything he wants to do.

> Justifying the drowning of children too uphold God's imagine is foul.

I'm not sure what this sentence means because of the typos. There is no brutality if the people were deserving of punishment, which the Genesis account says.

> You just suggested to us those children weren't innocent since corrupted people were teaching them things that they had no way of knowing any better. They're in hell now. That's the brutality of God's action.

Then you didn't really read what I said. What I wrote was, "Any baby or child who dies gets a free ticket to heaven," so where is the alleged brutality on God's part?

[Ivan]

> What makes you think the children were innocent? Have you seen the news about Somalia, where even the children are being taught to murder?

Those kids aren't evil. They are just brainwashed. They lack the capability to think about their situation critical and go "holy shit we are doing bad stuff", in part because they are that young. But heck, we can just focus on say 1 year old kids. They haven't done anything wrong. Do they deserve to drown (apparently not the nicest way to die)?

Oh and that's not to speak of how on earth God fit millions of various species on the arc? Just all the varieties of bugs could probably count for more mass than conventional animals. And let's not forget how some species require way more than just 2 of them to survive. Like bees or ants, where the queen needs a literal army feeding her.

[jimwalton]

> Those kids aren't evil. They are just brainwashed.

That's right. I didn't say they were evil. I said they weren't innocent.

> But heck, we can just focus on say 1 year old kids. They haven't done anything wrong. Do they deserve to drown (apparently not the nicest way to die)?

Even a 1-yr-old is growing up part of a broken system, and will (in this context) be trained in the same corruption as the rest of society. Even a 1-yr-old is born separated from God, a "citizen" of the wrong country, so to speak. But even a 1-yr-old get an automatic free ticket to heaven, so we really don't have a problem here. And even if anyone innocent got caught up in the flood, they would immediately go to haven, so there's no problem here.

> Oh and that's not to speak of how on earth God fit millions of various species on the arc?

He didn't. First of all, the Flood was massively regional, not global. So he would only have to get on the ark those particular species of the region. There's no need to get all the bugs, the peculiar species of Australia, along with all the fresh water fish. The Flood wasn't global.