Board index ‹ Noah's Ark & the Flood

[Souderton]

I mean top marks for the formatting, but your apologetics are simply awful.

You claim it was no mistake as god doesn't make mistakes, but;

> ..God needed a plan of action to bring creation back to functionality..

That's a plan B and a plan B only happens when plan A (make a perfect creation ) fails. That's a mistake.

Also how can you tell me that;

> ..I also do not believe that the flood was universal, but instead a massively large regional (continental?) flood. The "all" language is rhetorical..

..and then list point 6 that;

> The Bible stories are to be taken seriously.

If if its a global flood its magic that defies the laws of physics and needs almost twice as much water as the whole world contains, and then needs it to all drain away to ,..somewhere magical after 40 days.

OR its a regional flood that dosn't destroy all of mankind from Australia to America, in which case its just a regular flood like happens every winter in some part of the world, and is not magical and is therefor hardly worth mentioning let alone inventing to bonkers idea that every single land animal got on a boat and all the salt water fish just held their gills.

The tale of the flood makes no sense at all and contradicts so much of the bible let alone its major incompatibility with real geology, geography, hydrology, mineralogy, anthropology and archeology that there is more evidence for Santa's grotto than for the biblical flood.

[jimwalton]

> You claim it was no mistake as god doesn't make mistakes, but;
> ..God needed a plan of action to bring creation back to functionality..
> That's a plan B and a plan B only happens when plan A (make a perfect creation ) fails. That's a mistake.

Right. The failure of the plan was due to humans, not to God. God created all things good, He gave them their function, and He ordered them to function in a good way. Because the plan failed is the work of humans who screwed things up, not a fault ("mistake") in the plan of God.

> If if its a global flood its magic that defies the laws of physics and needs almost twice as much water as the whole world contains

Right, but even more water than that. To cover the high mountains of Earth would require about 8 times more water than we have on the planet. And that volume of water would have altered the Earth's weight and balance and disturbed its orbit around the sun as well as the moon's orbit around the Earth.

> OR its a regional flood that dosn't destroy all of mankind from Australia to America, in which case its just a regular flood like happens every winter in some part of the world

Oh, there was nothing regular about it. It would have been the kind of thing that happened in about 5500 BC, when what was then a small lake in the center of what we now know as the Sea rapidly became a large sea when water from the Mediterranean found a pathway to it through some kind of cataclysm. About 60,000 square miles of the coastal areas of the lake violently became part of the Black Sea in a relatively short span of time. It would have killed everyone in the vicinity. I'm not claiming this was Noah's flood, but it was this kind of event. There's nothing "just a regular flood" about it.

> The tale of the flood makes no sense at all and contradicts so much of the bible let alone its major incompatibility with real geology, geography, hydrology, mineralogy, anthropology and archeology that there is more evidence for Santa's grotto than for the biblical flood.

This is where the conversation is. The flood as a massively regional event inundating an entire population makes plenty of sense. We know such things have happened. And there's nothing about such a cataclysm that is at odds with real geology, geography, hydrology, mineralogy, anthropology or archaeology. So there's no need to bring Santa into this. We can bring science and history into this, as well as theology, and read the flood as a historical event that is told to us in rhetorical hyperbole to make a theological point.

[Abernathy]

> Third, according to the Bible it was the humans who made the terrible mistake—turned evil, violent, and hopelessly corrupt—not God.

Except God knew they would turn bad so it was a mistake to create them.

[jimwalton]

You are implying that God should force all people to be good, that we should just be robots with no will of our own. Then we're not human, but automatons. Would you fall in love if you knew there was the possibility that it might turn sour? Would you marry a person knowing that it possibly may not last? Would you have children knowing that they possibly may grow up and rebel against you? Does this make you a bad person?

Suppose I am a glass maker, and I make exquisite works of art out of glass. I sell them in my store. Some people come in and buy some of them and take them home. One night they get angry at each other and throw my pieces of glass against the wall in their anger and break them. Did I make a mistake in making them? No, the breakage was not my fault. That glass is breakable is the nature of glass, but their brokenness is not my fault, even if I can foresee that some of these pieces will possibly get broken some time in the future.

God made exquisite works of art: humanity. But since humans are not divine, we are capable of being broken. God instructed us how to stay whole, but one day in an act of rebellion the humans decided to break themselves. God didn't make a mistake in making them. He made them beautiful. He knew breakage was possible, and that's why he set them in an environment of love and safety and warned them about what exactly would break them. God made no mistake. It is because of the humans themselves that they were essentially broken. It was the humans who made the mistakes.

Love always involves risks. It can be no other way. Don't blame God for our mistakes.

[Abernathy]

I am not implying anything. I am only following what supposedly happened with Noah's Ark which makes no sense. God knew that almost every person was going to be bad before God created them and God knew that he would have to kill all of them, including innocent children.

There is no way this ever happened.

[jimwalton]

> I am only following what supposedly happened with Noah's Ark which makes no sense.

What is it about the story that makes no sense? The Bible views people as godly or ungodly. A large flood in the ancient world was used as a theological lesson that God judges bad people, as any courtroom judge worth his salt would. Noah was warned by God that this flood was coming, and he built a large boat (nowhere near the size of what the Bible hyperbolically claims) to rescue animals, especially domestic ones. When the flood was over, he sacrificed animals to God and continued on with his life. What about this doesn't make sense?

> God knew that almost every person was going to be bad before God created them and God knew that he would have to kill all of them

God knew, yes, but remember the flood was a large local flood, not a global one. God killed the clans of people that were corrupt beyond hope. The Allies did the same thing in WWII. Right now a coalition of Western nations are doing the same thing with ISIS. What is the problem here? We work for justice and goodness on the Earth. So does God.

> including innocent children.

How many children were killed, just so we have a figure to work with for our discussion. And how do we know there were any except by making an assumption that there probably had to have been?

[Monticello]

You decided to make art out of glass. There are other, stronger materials to make art out of.

That is the problem. God decided to make humans this way. If he really wanted humans to "not break", he wouldn't make them out of "weak materials" in the first place.

[jimwalton]

Don't make too much out of the analogy. It's just an analogy saying that something could be perfect and flawless and still breakable. The fact is that since God, by definition, is uncreated, anything created would be less than God. Therefore anything he created, no matter what material he made it out of, would be susceptible to corruption (less than purity), sin (less than good), and death (less than eternal life). There's no way around it. God cannot create something uncreated, and therefore there is no option except to make something that is made, i.e., susceptible to some kind of weakness. God is not to blame. We are fantastic creatures with amazing abilities. Watch sporting events, musical concerts, art shows, science and technological discoveries—we as human beings are astounding with fantastic abilities. But God cannot possibly make something that is uncreated. It doesn't mean he is to blame for our choice to turn evil.

[Humphrey]

Every religion has its list of Dogmas which Must be believed. Even though One uses the term 'catechism' for that list, that doesn't mean that other religions don't have the same thing.

The fact that "God cannot be either omniscient or omnipotent" under the properties generally ascribed to it, is totally unrelated to whether it exists or not.

The concept itself is internally inconsistent.

Of course, it's easier to be irrational about something that doesn't exist, for the simple reason that it is impossible to examine the real thing.

[jimwalton]

> The concept itself is internally inconsistent.

What concept is internally inconsistent? Lay it out for me.