Questions on the Flood for TWD39 (or any theist)
This thread is mainly for TWD39, though other people who believe the flood, Noah and so on really happened are welcome to chime in. It is an extension of the other thread discussing language and the tower of Babel, which started some questions about Noah's flood.
If you believe that the Flood happened as the Bible states, then you must have rational answers to the following questions:
1 Were babies also killed in the flood? Were they deemed sinful, or just collateral damage? What about the unborn? (in case you think people are born with sin..) Is God an innocent baby killer?
2 If the flood covered the whole earth, where did the water come from, and where did it go afterwards?
3 If the flood was caused by rain for 40 days and nights, and rain covered the earth, then it would need to rain 112 million cubic kilometers each day. The water vapour that’s needed to be suspended in the air to achieve this would render the air unbreathable - people would have drowned by breathing this air. How did Noah and his family survive this?
4 How did the animals get to the arc? If Noah gathered them, how did he get around the world so quickly? If the animals came of their own accord, how did the giant tortoises get there in time? How did animals that can’t swim cross seas to get there?
5 How did Noah feed the animals? Some animals have very specific diets (pandas eat only bamboo, koalas eat only eucalyptus, for example) so how did Noah get these foods, which don’t grow in Mesopotamia?
6 How did Noah keep meat fresh for the hungry carnivores?
7 How did the freshwater fish survive? Did the arc carry fresh water? How were these fish collected and stored?
8 The flood would have killed all plant life. What would the ‘saved’ herbivores eat? What about those that feed only on adult trees that take a long time to grow?
9 What about the carnivores? They must have had to eat the herbivores – they were on the arc for over a year, so any corpses would be completely rotten, as well as being buried under sediment.
10 Where would the animals find fresh water to sustain themselves?
11 How did the plants survive being underwater for more than a year? Some might have seeds that survive, but vast numbers of plant species would have become extinct. How come the are still here today?
12 When the flood ended, only 6 people survived that would go on to breed. The bible indicates that the tower of Babel happened 100 years after the flood. How were there enough people to build the tower, which must have been massive?
13 How did the Native Americans, and Australian Aboriginals get to their continents (Which don’t have land bridges with Asia) after the flood?
14 How did God ‘create’ the rainbow as part of the promise he’d never flood the whole world again? If there was refracted sunlight and rain ever before the flood, there must have been rainbows.
15 Why did god change his mind about how many of each type of animal had to be taken into the arc? Genesis 6 says take 2 of each, Genesis 7 says take up to 7.
16 Lastly, why did god go to all the trouble?
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Jabberwocky wrote:So, when did the flood occur then? The following conditions would have to be met for it to have occurred
1. Couldn't have been less than a few thousand years ago, as history was being recorded, and it would have been mentioned.
2. People had to have ample communication skills to communicate with one another the concepts that the bible writes of people communicating with one another about, and
3. People couldn't have been too far spread out, in order to allow the news of the impending flood to spread to every human.
We just don't know. I'm not the one claiming we have to know when it happened.
1. of course not
2. right
3. sure.
So take another guess. When do you think it happened?
Wow, time for a lesson in basic logic.
Let's call "X" the number of years since of Noah's flood, you concede that
X>3,000 because of 1.
Then you concede per 2 that it must have been a time when people could communicate using language. I am going to be super generous here and say that means X<600,000. that is assuming that neanderthals had developed an advanced language, something which is usually disputed.
Then per 3 you agree that people must have been geographically close. We established earlier that means at a minimum that X>2,000,000.
So what number can X be if X>3,000 and X<600,000 and X>2,500,000?
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
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So, when did the flood occur then? The following conditions would have to be met for it to have occurred
1. Couldn't have been less than a few thousand years ago, as history was being recorded, and it would have been mentioned.
2. People had to have ample communication skills to communicate with one another the concepts that the bible writes of people communicating with one another about, and
3. People couldn't have been too far spread out, in order to allow the news of the impending flood to spread to every human.
Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.
We just don't know. I'm not the one claiming we have to know when it happened.
1. of course not
2. right
3. sure.
So take another guess. When do you think it happened?