Why Would Noah's Flood Have Been the Best Way for God to Cleanse the Earth?

[F1fan]

The Christian God didn't just throw dice and let the chips fall where they may; he deliberately creates evil, disasters, and calamities (Isaiah 45:7). And Proverbs 16:4 says, "The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil."

According to the Bible, God killed a man and his wife for lying to Peter (Acts 5:5-10). He also ordered his 'chosen people' to do his dirty work when he told them to wipe the Amalekites off the face of the Earth; killing every single man, woman, child, infant, and all their animals (Deuteronomy 25:17; Exodus 17:8–13; 1 Samuel 15:2-3). That's not to mention his huge temper tantrum that led him to commit global genocide. If the Bible is accurate, then the Christian God is nothing more than a sadistic psychopathic bloodthirsty genocidal maniac, who obviously takes pleasure in deliberately creating total pandemonium throughout the world, and then he sits back and watches his creation tear itself apart, and he does absolutely nothing to stop all the violence and human suffering.

As far as I'm concerned, that's not a loving, merciful God. In truth, that's a sadistic and psychopathic God, who cruelly manipulates his creation for his own personal pleasure. Humanity and everything else in his creation are nothing more than his playthings.

KJV, "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things."

Evil:
1. Morally bad or wrong; wicked, 2. Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful, 3. Characterized by or indicating misfortune; ominous.

NIV, "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things."

Disaster:
1. An occurrence causing widespread destruction and distress; a catastrophe, 2. A grave misfortune, and 3. A total failure.

ESV, "I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things."

Calamity: 1. An event that brings terrible loss, lasting distress, or severe affliction; a disaster, 2. Dire distress resulting from loss or tragedy, 3. Any great misfortune or cause of misery; in general, any event or disaster which produces extensive evils, as loss of crops, earthquakes, etc., but also applied to any misfortune which brings great distress on a person; misfortune; distress; adversity.

Good outline of how the Creation does not align with how Christians want to portray it.

My guess is the writing and editing of Genesis was to reflect the hardships of life to a primitive but religious people. It appears they felt trapped to be honest about how a God could do this to them. It certainly doesn't;t work to the New Testament version of this God.

 

[Fallen Prophet]

Well that would be a question for all the believers who insist this is true. Countless believers have claimed God is perfect, the Creation is perfect, A&E were perfect, etc. This illustrates part of the problem with Creationists and theists in general as they interpret Bible stories and add their own content and beliefs that are not part of the Bible.

I agree - that is a problem.

Another problem is trying to judge God by the false interpretations of those people.

Nowhere is it written that God claimed that any of His creations were "perfect".

So - there is no reason to claim that God is somehow inept or bears responsibility for how His imperfect creations decide to act.

 

[blü 2]

Believing Genesis does not mean believing a literal six 24 hr days about 6000 years ago.

The bible is specific that in Genesis each of the six days of creation means a single rotation of the earth ─ the formulation "and there was evening and there was morning" is used throughout.

Is the flood meant to have been the best way or just the way God chose?

We know without the slightest doubt that no Genesis flood ever happened in reality. For a start, it would have required more than a billion cubic miles of water over and above the water presently on the earth.

If I were omnipotent and smart and I wanted to destroy humans, I'd just snap my fingers and all the humans would disappear. Or if I felt like it, all the humans except Noah and tribe. That way all the animals could stay where they are, and no one would have to invent an embarrassing explanation how eg the capybaras got back to South America without stopping and settling along the way and so being found in all intervening points along its track. Or the kangaroos to Australia, the lemurs to Madagascar.

 

[Bree]

Mom was into classical music.
I was to play piano or violin.
No instrument other than those in a symphony
orchestra was even legitimate or real, " pop"
music, unworthy of mention.

That I describe in comparison to the common
Christian attitude that only belief in their god
is legitimate, and that bible- type stuff ended in
bible days. Only bible- miracles are real.

Is that your belief too?

not at all. There are supernatural events that people witness. Jesus himself spoke of such things but notice he said it as a 'warning' to christians

Matthew 24:23 “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look! Here is the Christ,’+ or, ‘There!’ do not believe it.+ 24 For false Christs and false prophets+ will arise and will perform great signs and wonders so as to mislead,+ if possible, even the chosen ones

Christians do not need to deny or disbelieve in miracle workers because they are out there. But the question that should be asked is "who provides them their power"

The christian perspective should be that Jesus and the miracles he performed have been and gone. They are not coming back and if you happen to see someone performing such miracles it is not coming from Jesus or God.

Meanwhile, in other cultural traditions,
miracles are a daily thing, spirits speak,
etc and blah.
And lots of Christians are full of weeping statue
stories, miracle of the sun or Lourdes, etc n blah.

Id guess that the greatvmahority of people
are extremely " aware" of "god / suoernatural"
in their daily lives, hemmed in with restrictions
and superstitions all about.

I was in Philippines when there was an eclipse and everyone was making a commotion to stop
the lizard eating the moon.

If you' ve a clear line between superstition and
God- belief, between real events and fiction,
between "miracle" and natural event etc, it
would be good if you explained it.

Frankly, I find some of the practices and beliefs- theres an endless list n China- as practiced byt various relatives, to be ridiculous and tiresome.

What is sad about people drifting away from
the moldy past is not clear to me, at all.

I think what it shows about people is that we are inherently 'religious'
We want to believe in something greater then ourselves. It fills a need in us that we cannot fill with material things.
Spirituality is certainly a state of mind and billions of people are inherently religious.

That is worth exploring.

 

[David Davidovich]

You don't know what baptism is?

Sorry, but your answer sounded like one of those distracting off-the-wall answers and it's been a long time since I read 1 Peter 3:18-21 NIV - Bible Gateway. However, it would have been more helpful if you had made a reference to that scripture instead of trying to play who's-on-first.

 

[David Davidovich]

God often has used natural elements to execute justice on the earth. I dont know why a flood to wipe out all living things was used. But it is not always necessary for us to know every detail as to why something was done a certain way.

Perhaps its an opportunity for us to learn that God does not need to explain himself to us.

Thank you for your answers, but basically, you are invoking the appeal to ignorance and the appeal to authority fallacies. And those may be good answers when one doesn't really have an answer, but thank you once again for your answers.

 

[David Davidovich]

IMO, it's allegorical as a rebuttal of the earlier and more widespread Babylonian narrative that was polytheistic. Now, whether the authors saw it this way in writing Genesis is impossible to tell.

Well, if you are correct, then the writers of Genesis did a poor job at conveying that since there are a lot of believers who don't and didn't view that story as a rebuttal of the earlier and more widespread Babylonian narrative, but viewed it as historical, including Jesus himself.

 

[David Davidovich]

No miracles in the last couple thousand years,
things like the sun stopping, ocean parting,
pillars of salt or fire, cities getting the fire n' brim stuff. Tower of babel, flood....

Well, that much is true, they sure are not happening now, and to all evidence
and reason, they never did happen.

And don't forget talking donkeys.

 

[David Davidovich]

If the Creator didn't want people and civilization to get out of control then it should have created beings that wouldn't behave that way. God could have easily created non-violent, cooperative people, no mental defects, and the result would be social stability. The way the Fall is describes suggests god just threw dice and let evolution do it's own thing, and without supervision and guidance. When things got out of hand God decided to wipe most of it out? And nothing was fixed. So why do we need a God at all?

I liked your answer, but the only thing different that I would say is that believers use the excuse/scapegoat that 'free will' is what made things go wrong.

 

[David Davidovich]

You want a Bully God that wouldn't give you any choice in matters ?

But isn't the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures full of examples of a Bully God?

 

[David Davidovich]

The Christian God didn't just throw dice and let the chips fall where they may; he deliberately creates evil, disasters, and calamities (Isaiah 45:7). And Proverbs 16:4 says, "The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil."

According to the Bible, God killed a man and his wife for lying to Peter (Acts 5:5-10). He also ordered his 'chosen people' to do his dirty work when he told them to wipe the Amalekites off the face of the Earth; killing every single man, woman, child, infant, and all their animals (Deuteronomy 25:17; Exodus 17:8–13; 1 Samuel 15:2-3). That's not to mention his huge temper tantrum that led him to commit global genocide. If the Bible is accurate, then the Christian God is nothing more than a sadistic psychopathic bloodthirsty genocidal maniac, who obviously takes pleasure in deliberately creating total pandemonium throughout the world, and then he sits back and watches his creation tear itself apart, and he does absolutely nothing to stop all the violence and human suffering.

As far as I'm concerned, that's not a loving, merciful God. In truth, that's a sadistic and psychopathic God, who cruelly manipulates his creation for his own personal pleasure. Humanity and everything else in his creation are nothing more than his playthings.

KJV, "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things."

Evil:
1. Morally bad or wrong; wicked, 2. Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful, 3. Characterized by or indicating misfortune; ominous.

NIV, "I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things."

Disaster:
1. An occurrence causing widespread destruction and distress; a catastrophe, 2. A grave misfortune, and 3. A total failure.

ESV, "I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things."

Calamity: 1. An event that brings terrible loss, lasting distress, or severe affliction; a disaster, 2. Dire distress resulting from loss or tragedy, 3. Any great misfortune or cause of misery; in general, any event or disaster which produces extensive evils, as loss of crops, earthquakes, etc., but also applied to any misfortune which brings great distress on a person; misfortune; distress; adversity.

I would love to see URAVIP2ME's rebuttal of that.

 

[David Davidovich]

I agree - that is a problem.

Another problem is trying to judge God by the false interpretations of those people.

Nowhere is it written that God claimed that any of His creations were "perfect".

So - there is no reason to claim that God is somehow inept or bears responsibility for how His imperfect creations decide to act.

Well, actually there are verses in the Bible that believers view as conveying the idea that God is perfect and so are all his ways.

click here: 41 Bible verses about God, Perfection Of (knowing-jesus.com)

 

[David Davidovich]

If I were omnipotent and smart and I wanted to destroy humans, I'd just snap my fingers and all the humans would disappear. Or if I felt like it, all the humans except Noah and tribe. That way all the animals could stay where they are, and no one would have to invent an embarrassing explanation how eg the capybaras got back to South America without stopping and settling along the way and so being found in all intervening points along its track. Or the kangaroos to Australia, the lemurs to Madagascar.

Makes perfect sense to me... And also perfectly answers my original thread question.

 

[David Davidovich]

not at all. There are supernatural events that people witness. Jesus himself spoke of such things but notice he said it as a 'warning' to christians

Matthew 24:23 “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look! Here is the Christ,’+ or, ‘There!’ do not believe it.+ 24 For false Christs and false prophets+ will arise and will perform great signs and wonders so as to mislead,+ if possible, even the chosen ones

Christians do not need to deny or disbelieve in miracle workers because they are out there. But the question that should be asked is "who provides them their power"

The christian perspective should be that Jesus and the miracles he performed have been and gone. They are not coming back and if you happen to see someone performing such miracles it is not coming from Jesus or God.

But, Bree, you make it sound as if those verses at Matthew 24:23-24 only apply to believers beyond the first century after miracles had been and gone. But that's not so:

False Christs Active In the First Century!

The tests in Matthew, Mark, and Luke are clear. The apostles asked Jesus for a sign of His future (to them) coming and the end of the world or age. The main question is this: were there false Christs during the lifetime of the apostles? Well if you study the scriptures and set aside previous biases you will find unanimous agreement among New Testament writers that false Christs and prophets had arisen during the first century. Therefore since scripture reveals false Christs during the days of the apostles, we can conclude that they were indeed living in the “last days” as foretold by Old Testament prophets. OK, so where is the New Testament evidence of the appearance of false Christs? Acts chapter five gives us the first example:​

click here: False Christs and False Prophets During the Lifetime of Jesus - Scripture Revealed

 

[F1fan]

I liked your answer, but the only thing different that I would say is that believers use the excuse/scapegoat that 'free will' is what made things go wrong.

Right, and they totally ignore that God had to create these dire consequences if the people made the wrong decision. Yet the people were not created with adequate wisdom and reasoning skill to make the right decision, and they were easily tempted. And of course God made sure they were tempted, so it was all a set up.

Do we really think if God wanted things to work out a certain way that they wouldn't? God had full control, there were no variables that God couldn't control. So the buck stops with God. If God really wanted to create wise and disciplined people who would follow the rules (as exists in many of us already) they wouldn't have disobeyed.

 

[Aupmanyav]

But with the global Flood that destroyed the earth and rearranged continents and so on, the extremes become pronounced — we now have ice caps and extremely high mountains that were pushed up from the Flood.

Floods do not change continents or raise mountains. That is the work of plate tectonics. Plate tectonics - Wikipedia

 

[David Davidovich]

Right, and they totally ignore that God had to create these dire consequences if the people made the wrong decision. Yet the people were not created with adequate wisdom and reasoning skill to make the right decision, and they were easily tempted. And of course God made sure they were tempted, so it was all a set up.

Well, actually, I have a different way of looking at that.

Do we really think if God wanted things to work out a certain way that they wouldn't?

I totally agree with that.

God had full control, there were no variables that God couldn't control. So the buck stops with God. If God really wanted to create wise and disciplined people who would follow the rules (as exists in many of us already) they wouldn't have disobeyed.

I totally agree.

 

[David Davidovich]

Floods do not change continents or raise mountains. That is the work of plate tectonics. Plate tectonics - Wikipedia

I agree. But I was quoting Bodie Hodge from the answersingenesis.org article that I referenced in the OP. Also, another author from answersingenesis.org had said:

Four generations after Noah, Genesis 10:25 records the birth of Peleg (meaning division) “for in his days was the earth divided”. Some suggest the continents of the earth were divided at this time. However, this seems unlikely, as such a process would have had to occur within a very confined time period. The resultant geological violence would be overwhelmingly catastrophic—like another Noahic Flood all over again. Any continental separation thus likely occurred during the Flood.1​

click here: In the Days of Peleg | Answers in Genesis

However, it would be really hard for me to believe that the: Breakup of Pangea - Dive & Discover (whoi.edu)-link only took 40 days and 40 nights.

Also, here an interesting quote from another religious website:

Pangea is the concept that all of the land masses of the earth were at one time connected as one giant super-continent. On a world map, some of the continents look like they could fit together like giant puzzle pieces (Africa and South America, for example). Does the Bible mention Pangea? Not explicitly, but possibly. Genesis 1:9 records, “And God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.’ And it was so.” Presumably, if all the water was “gathered to one place,” the dry ground would also be all “in one place.” Genesis 10:25 mentions, “…one was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided…” Some point to Genesis 10:25 as evidence that the earth was divided after the Flood of Noah.

While this view is possible, it is most definitely not universally held by Christians. Some view Genesis 10:25 as referring to the “division” that occurred at the Tower of Babel, not the division of the continents via “continental drift.” Some also dispute the post-Noahic Pangea separation due to the fact that, at the current rates of drift, the continents could not possibly have drifted so far apart in the time that has transpired since the Noahic Flood. However, it cannot be proven that the continents have always drifted at the same rate. Further, God is capable of expediting the continental-drift process to accomplish His goal of separating humanity (Genesis 11:8). Again, though, the Bible does not explicitly mention Pangea, or conclusively tell us when Pangea was broken apart.​

click here: Is the theory of Pangea possible? Does the Bible say that there was once a Pangea / Pangaea? | GotQuestions.org

But all this reiterates that the answer to my thread question: "Why Would Noah's Flood Have Been the Best Way for God to Cleanse the Earth?" would be that it wouldn't have. It just seems like there were just too many convoluted steps that were involved with having a global flood take care a problem of human behavior on earth.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

But isn't the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures full of examples of a Bully God?

To me, gifting us with free-will choices is Not bullying but: choice giving.
I wonder how many people think of 'traffic laws' as governmental bullying.
True, a speeding ticket for going through a red light is not considered as sinning against the motor vehicle code.
However, who would like to drive without any traffic signs or lights ________
So, it was with God's temporary Constitution Law of the Old Mosaic Law.

To me, God was Not being a Bully when he gave us the assignment to take care of Earth - Genesis 1:28; Psalms 115:16
We were created with the intelligence to take care of Earth by living by God's standards for us. - Isaiah 45:18-19
An Earth that is perfectly placed and balanced in our Milky Way to support life.
Earth placed as some have said: perfectly placed in a ' Goldie Locks ' position with Earth's tilt and does Not wobble.
Or, as King David wrote at Psalms 8:3-4 that God takes care of us. Rather, it is man who is the Bully.
For MAN's Old and New history shows that MAN has dominated MAN to MAN's hurt, MAN's injury.
The Constitution Law of the old Mosaic Law was only for one nation, the nation of ancient Israel (period).
I suppose one could feel that by man breaking God's Law that God was the Bully by Not allowing that.
However, if everyone one on Earth lived by God's Golden Rule of Leviticus 19:18 people would obey out of love.
That command is Not a burden but promotes our well being.
God always warns before taking action.
This is why the good news of God's Kingdom (Daniel 2:44-45) is now being declared world wide.
Declared just as Jesus instructed to do at Matthew 24:14; Acts of the Apostles 1:8
So, it is MAN's bullying that can't promise peace ( it's more than we need more peace )
It is people who often pursue 'peace' but only for self or selfish reasons.
Whereas, in the end (of wickedness) it will be God's justice for all righteous people - Matthew 25:31-33

 

[URAVIP2ME]

I agree. But I was quoting Bodie Hodge from the answersingenesis.org article that I referenced in the OP. Also, another author from answersingenesis.org had said:

Four generations after Noah, Genesis 10:25 records the birth of Peleg (meaning division) “for in his days was the earth divided”. Some suggest the continents of the earth were divided at this time. However, this seems unlikely, as such a process would have had to occur within a very confined time period. The resultant geological violence would be overwhelmingly catastrophic—like another Noahic Flood all over again. Any continental separation thus likely occurred during the Flood.1​

click here: In the Days of Peleg | Answers in Genesis
However, it would be really hard for me to believe that the: Breakup of Pangea - Dive & Discover (whoi.edu)-link only took 40 days and 40 nights........................................

While this view is possible, it is most definitely not universally held by Christians. Some view Genesis 10:25 as referring to the “division” that occurred at the Tower of Babel, not the division of the continents via “continental drift.” Some also dispute the post-Noahic Pangea separation due to the fact that, at the current rates of drift, the continents could not possibly have drifted so far apart in the time that has transpired since the Noahic Flood. However, it cannot be proven that the continents have always drifted at the same rate. Further, God is capable of expediting the continental-drift process to accomplish His goal of separating humanity ...............​

I read 150 days at Genesis 7:24 and Genesis 8:3.
So, the 40-day rain still left the people in the Ark for much more than 40 days.
Genesis 10:25-32 is about earth's population being divided, and what happened at Genesis 11:9 ( Babel )
​