A Bunch of Reasons Why I Question Noah's Flood Story:

[robocop (actually)]

Not inserting stuff that is utterly false to replace "what people couldn't understand" would have been a great start.

People make modern interpretation out of scripture all the time. Mostly on the religious side and not the scientific side.

 

[robocop (actually)]

Let me say this: the flood is probably the hardest thing scientists have with the Bible. I understand that they cannot find a way it happened looking at the evidence. But most of the Bible is historical.

With God messing with the entire planet I can simply allow Him to do it His way.

 

[robocop (actually)]

The earth might act in different modes of reality we don't understand.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I am good at forming hypotheses. That's all I'm doing is looking for a hypothesis that works.

Your posts here contradict that claim.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I said, "world-wide flood," not just, "flood."

I know. That is one of the main reasons that we know it never happened.

 

[ecco]

If the system was unreliable, their ships would all be lost. their crew - extinct.
Thus the creator is reliable. We should thank him for a system that did not pop out of nowhere for no reason, and follow unguided random processes, which would be disorderly, and haphazard.

If your creator was so reliable, why did he have to destroy most of his creation?

Or do you mean that your creator is a reliable killer of humankind?

 

[nPeace]

The various strata of the earth, which you find when you either dig downwards, or consider a part of the earth that gives you a side view, like the sides of the grand canyon (to take one of endless possible examples).

And as I've remarked to you before, what they'd have to show had there been a flood such as Genesis describes is a single flood layer all over all continents and islands and the ocean floor.

But as you know, there's no such thing.

The earth is about 4,5 bn years old, so a flood layer in the last (say) 10,000 years will not be so far from the top. But of course it's not there, and neither are there enormous numbers of bones of all the animals said to die in the story. It's not a question of having to dig up the whole earth ─ it's a question of finding nothing like what would have to be there had there really been a Flood, no matter where you dig.

I think you are assuming that the bodies would all have settled where they died. You also are assuming that all these bodies were buried quickly. Are you making these assumptions?
I don't think everything works ideally as humans assume. So when you create in your mind situations, then there is where surprises take you at every turn.

But they didn't have a freezer, so they'd have been running a very busy slaughterhouse ... gee, I wonder how many species went lost forever at that time just to keep the tigers fat!

Did people have fridges before the 1600s?
Long before the modern conveniences of refrigeration, people were storing their food using time-tested methods. Many modern homesteaders are learning and honing these skills as a way to preserve their harvest and continue to serve their families home-grown, home-raised food throughout the year.

https://www.history-magazine.com/re...servation used,, smoking, pickling and drying.

 

[blü 2]

I don't think everything works ideally as humans assume. So when you create in your mind situations, then there is where surprises take you at every turn.

Did people have fridges before the 1600s?

Well, if they're capable of building a fully covered floating device that could house pairs of thousands of species of animals and the fodder to last them and their incident offspring a year plus the year or years it took for vegetation hence fodder to grow back at the end of the flood, plus animals for food for themselves and the carnivores, and the sanitation requirements to go with that, why, surely they wouldn't just have fridges, they'd have electric light, air con, atomic power, no?

But still no genetic bottleneck in all species of land animals and all of the same date.

Still no geological flood layer all over all continents and islands and the ocean floor and dated to the last 10,000 years or so.

And where on earth could that extra billion cubic miles of water have got to? Gosh, it's like when you're distracted for a second and then you can't find your keys ...

Still, it's a pretty story, and a Noah's Ark for Christmas has solved a lot of present-buying problems, so it can be useful too. And for sex education ─ this is the mummy bos taurus, this is the daddy bos taurus, this is the mummy hydrochaerus, this is the daddy hydrochaerus ...

 

[nPeace]

Sure we can. Because the dimensions of the ark are given in the scripts as well as everything else he took with him. And it doesn't fit!

Which Chapter and verse tells us he took 17,400 birds; 12,000 reptiles; 9,000 mammals; 5,000 amphibians; 2,000,000 insects?

So you found something that seems to agree with you. Do you have an explanation you would like to share about the OMZ and how water far below this OMZ could be oxygenated? Would you like to share this information and these formulas and submit them to peer review by publishing them in a peer reviewed scientific journal?

No. Why?

No evidence presented for the "flood" stands up to educated scrutiny. There is no evidence for this event, but the apologist wants you to think there is.

You started this thread, did you not. Why are you worrying about what apologist say? Why did you create the thread.
I'm pointing out to you, where you have speculated and created your own story, and also why it's not clearly the case your opinion on this is correct.
The evidence you are looking for does not need to be found in the form you expect.
For example, the evidence for Jesus Christ was written in scrolls. No physical evidence was found.
Examination of those scrolls, along with other historical documents revealed that the scrolls were correct,
However, that does not prevent the skeptic from continually questioning other things in the document.

In the same way, the flood account was recorded in a scroll.
No physical evidence may be found. Does that mean the account is false, and the event did not happen?
If we use that "logic", then we should apply the same to everything. So Jesus never existed, and the historians all lied. We can't even believe the Assyrians sacked Judah.

What I am saying is, why spend time on one particular account in the Bible, as though you think that targeting that, and arguing against it, will make the Bible void?
Why not look at other things?
Perhaps because so much evidence is turning up and embarrassing the opponents, and you think the flood account is an easy target because the circumstantial evidence is looked at from another perspective.

Sort of reminds me of that guy, what's his name... Porphyry.
The poor guy poured his heart into attacking Daniel. Why? Porphyry became one of the most able pagan adversaries of Christianity of his day. His aim was not to disprove the substance of Christianity's teachings but rather the records within which the teachings are communicated.

The poor man failed miserably. To his dismay, the focus of his attack was vindicated.
This repeats itself time and time again.

As one poster said, by looking at all the other evidence available, one does not need physical evidence to trust that the flood really did take place.

 

[gnostic]

Let me say this: the flood is probably the hardest thing scientists have with the Bible. I understand that they cannot find a way it happened looking at the evidence. But most of the Bible is historical.

No, robocop. Most of OT are myths, and some parts of the two books of Kings are “historical”, but the “historical” come ONLY AFTER SOLOMON when the kingdoms were already comprised of Judah and Israel.

For instances, historical only come in Kings passages when reigns of kings of Judah or kings of Judah, talk of contacts with the Assyrian rulers, which can be independently verified from real contemporary Assyrian sources of such encounters taking places. So where Hebrews and Assyrians do encounter each other, and independent sources (eg Assyrian or Babylonian or Egyptian sources) can verify them, that’s when you do get historical in the OT sources.

But some of the miracles mentioned in Kings, such as the stories of Elijah or any other prophets, those cannot be verified by independent sources.

The only problems with the books of Kings are (not talking about the prophets here), they were largely written or composed not contemporary to the rulers that reigned at the time; Kings were composed apparently near of Judah and during their exiles in Babylon.

Histories only happened when you have independent sources that can verify what happened in Judah or in Israel.

To give you examples of independent sources, Julius Caesar wrote his own memoirs about his wars in Gaul and the civil wars that followed with. Pompey and others. Independent sources come from contemporary people who were either Caesar’s enemies or who were neutral (Cicero), and from public official records.

 

[robocop (actually)]

Your posts here contradict that claim.

Nope. All I'm doing is looking for a way.

 

[robocop (actually)]

I know. That is one of the main reasons that we know it never happened.

Almost every culture believing in a world-wide flood is evidence that it happened, not evidence that it didn't.

 

[robocop (actually)]

No, robocop. Most of OT are myths, and some parts of the two books of Kings are “historical”, but the “historical” come ONLY AFTER SOLOMON when the kingdoms were already comprised of Judah and Israel.

For instances, historical only come in Kings passages when reigns of kings of Judah or kings of Judah, talk of contacts with the Assyrian rulers, which can be independently verified from real contemporary Assyrian sources of such encounters taking places. So where Hebrews and Assyrians do encounter each other, and independent sources (eg Assyrian or Babylonian or Egyptian sources) can verify them, that’s when you do get historical in the OT sources.

But some of the miracles mentioned in Kings, such as the stories of Elijah or any other prophets, those cannot be verified by independent sources.

The only problems with the books of Kings are (not talking about the prophets here), they were largely written or composed not contemporary to the rulers that reigned at the time; Kings were composed apparently near of Judah and during their exiles in Babylon.

Histories only happened when you have independent sources that can verify what happened in Judah or in Israel.

To give you examples of independent sources, Julius Caesar wrote his own memoirs about his wars in Gaul and the civil wars that followed with. Pompey and others. Independent sources come from contemporary people who were either Caesar’s enemies or who were neutral (Cicero), and from public official records.

TIME magazine ran an article that said besides the five books of Moses, the Old Testament is historical.

 

[nPeace]

If there was a tree called an Olive Tree that is the same tree today, then the Hebrew language had a word for it; thus we have a word that we translate to "Olive Tree". If it were an unknown tree, the Hebrew texts would not have called it an "Olive Tree". This argument fails.

Do you mean like all your speculative arguments.

Why can we assume that when there is no evidence to substantiate that assumption?

There is evidence, that living things were bigger in the past. Just look at the fossils.

Fluffy rodents twice the size of a gray squirrel survived for tens of thousands of years, and then abruptly disappeared a few thousand years ago--perhaps driven to extinction by humans
"We have had evidence of extinct large mammals on the Philippine island of Luzon for a long time, but there has been virtually no information about fossils of smaller-sized mammals. The reason is probably that research had focused on open-air sites where the large fossil mammal faunas were known to have been preserved, rather than the careful sieving of cave deposits that preserve a broader size-range of vertebrates including the teeth and bones of rodents," says Janine Ochoa, an Assistant Professor of Archaeology at the University of the Philippines - Diliman and the study's lead author.

 

[nPeace]

Well, since they believe the skipper got 900 years old, or that prophets can live a few days inside a fish, among the rest, I would say the sky is the limit of what they can believe.

But that is not what puzzles me; at the end of the day, you just have to invoke a miracle to explain everything. What puzzles me is that a literal interpretation of the Bible does not affect salvation, apparently. Which is obvious, considering that the vast majority of Christians laugh at Adam and Eve, talking serpents and such. For instance, WL Craig calls YEC an embarrassment for Christianity.

So, it looks to me like pure intellectual masochism, that exposes to global ridicule, also coming from most Christians, without any real advantage.

Ciao

- viole

(2 Peter 2:2) . . .because of them the way of the truth will be spoken of abusively. . .

 

[Subduction Zone]

Nope. All I'm doing is looking for a way.

Too bad.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Almost every culture believing in a world-wide flood is evidence that it happened, not evidence that it didn't.

No, you do not understand the concept of evidence, Especially when a hypothesis is involved.

You probably do not even know the most important feature of a hypothesis. Until you learn you are only making ad hoc explanations. Not hypotheses. And those are worthless in debates.

 

[robocop (actually)]

No, you do not understand the concept of evidence, Especially when a hypothesis is involved.

You probably do not even know the most important feature of a hypothesis. Until you learn you are only making ad hoc explanations. Not hypotheses. And those are worthless in debates.

I look for ideas I can test in the public square; all I ask is to hear me and challenge me if you find them bad or admit it if you find them good.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I look for ideas I can test in the public square; all I ask is to hear me and challenge me if you find them bad or admit it if you find them good.

You are looking for excuses to believe. You are not trying to find out if your idea is true or not.

If you do not have a test that can refute your idea you do not have a hypothesis. And without at least a hypothesis you cannot have reliable evidence for your idea.

 

[nPeace]

That's a good question. Perhaps @nPeace can help answer....what exactly is the point of defending the Biblical flood story to non-Christians? Is believing the story essential for salvation? If not, then why spend so much time and effort advocating for it?

IOW, what exactly is your purpose in this thread?

Why I am here in this thread?
I will answer that after you tell me the truth of why you are here, especially after declaring to everyone, it doesn't matter to you.