Why was there a need for a global flood?

It sounds like you are saying that you consider G-d's actions to be immoral. According to Judaism, however, is not the end of anyone. It is considered a movement into another world. This may explain why G-d is not considered to be immoral with regard to removing people from this world. Of course this can be seen as immoral from the perspective of someone who thinks that a human is gone after the end of this life. But I hope you can see that G-d was not immoral at all from this perspective. Furthermore, it is G-d that has taught humanity morals according to Judaism. Therefore, it would be a paradox to say that G-d was acting immoral. You were right about the actual verse. Genesis Chapter 6 Verse 12 states that all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. This verse does not mean anything particularly to someone that is just reading the text. In fact, this verse does not really have any basic translation that would mean anything. The Jewish oral tradition gives the meaning of this verse to be exactly what I have told you. I suggest that you give this verse some thought to see exactly how this explanation makes perfect sense over here. I am sorry that there was a misunderstanding here, but I thought that you would have asked for an exact verse if that is what you wanted. The point of the flood was not to wipe out humanity but to remove the evildoers. G-d felt that the amount of evil in the world had reached a limit beyond which would not be considered acceptable. Also, Noah was having children, and G-d wanted to give his children a chance of having the right to choose good and not be overcome by the evil. Just as a side note, the Torah gives the ages of the people in that generation as being much more than 100 years. It would have taken a long time for humanity to disappear even if nobody would have children.Just as a side note, I did not say that nobody was having children; rather, I was trying to explain that it was very possible that nobody was having children, and if they were it was the minority of people and not the majority. Also, your comment about where babies come from does not really fit with anything that I was saying, and I would appreciate if you would not just through insults at me. If you read through my post carefully you will see that I said that the evildoers were engaging in ual pleasures as an act of selfishness. Only the evildoers were doing this. I did not mention that all ual pleasures are evil or immoral. You have to admit that you did not see me actually express this idea that you claim exists in my head. I will tell you what you have told me many times: Stop telling me what I think. It's insulting. I was only trying to point out that your idea of loving parents with children is contrary to the world that was portrayed in the time of the flood. I understand you did not say anything about loving parents. But you seem to be ignoring the horrible world that was portrayed at that time. I mention this to anyone that thinks they know what the Torah is saying. Do not think that you have the true story after reading a Christian translation called the old testament. This does not yield the truth about the Torah. In order to understand the Torah you must read the actual untranslated version of the Hebrew text, as well as the oral tradition that was meant to explain the seemingly cryptic written text.

I have a thought I haven't seen explored here.The tribal shamans elaborated upon an old tribal myth in an attempt to control and manipulate their people.To me this makes more sense than most of the explanations I have seen to date. And it is a better fit with the scientific evidence which fails to show any credible evidence for this supposed flood.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

You have not seen this thought explored here because it does not answer the opening post in any way. The question seems to be asking why G-d decided to use a global flood and did not instead just snap His fingers and make all the evildoers disappear. I don't see how what you are saying answers the question. Where do you see anyone being manipulated with the story of the global flood? According to the Torah, G-d promised "never" to bring such a flood again. The flood could easily be removed from the Torah and there would be no more or less power of manipulation. Also, how did this old tribal myth come about in the first place? All you have mentioned is that it is old. However, the age of the story does not give any explanation of how it originated. What other explanations are you referring to here? You have to realize that your explanation also has no evidence what so ever. You may be lacking evidence for the flood, but you are also lacking evidence of such a tribal myth.

Read my little story in the Can God create another God? thread Coyote? It's pretty similar to what you're claiming here.Perhaps you came up with this thought on your own, in which case the only thing for me to say is: I guess that when they say "great minds think alike" They're right

Hey Open MInd, I handled some of your concerns in the Can God create another God thread. Just wanted to say this here: *Points to the epic of Gilgamesh.*

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I hunt for the truth

This is my last response to your post 46. I am sorry if certain people are not true atheists according to your standards, but I can't start differentiating between all of the millions of different types of atheists you know. Unlike Judaism, atheism is not an organized religion and nobody sets the standards of who is a true atheist. However, I was speaking for some of the atheist that I have heard here even though you may not consider them to be real. Also, your opinions about rights seem to make little sense. Let us assume for the sake of this debate that G-d did create all of us and is also sustaining our lives every single instant of time. This is what the Jewish religion believes, and they are the ones who tell the story of the global flood. You think that G-d does not have a right to destroy his own creation. However, what is the meaning of a right. How are you to judge what rights G-d has or hasn't? In fact, what right do you have to assign rights? Who gives rights anyway? It is G-d. Therefore, how can you say that G-d would not have a right? If He did create the world than it would be He who would decide what rights things should or should not have. Think about an example of you and your inventions. If you would build a nice sand castle on the beach would you have a right to destroy it afterwards. Of course you would. You made the sand castle, how can someone else tell you what to do? Whether it is right or wrong to destroy evildoers is a different question, but regarding the rights of G-d, I think it is obvious that if you make something you have a right to destroy it. This is especially so if you are the one who created the concept of rights. You have constantly been stating that it is wrong for G-d to kill the infants because they did nothing wrong. I am only pointing out that this entire argument would be considered hypocrisy if you yourself do not think anything is wrong with abortion of innocent babies. I do not know what you opinion is, but I was mentioning this as a side note. Deal. I must also request that you explain what you think I am saying before every reply in order to avoid confusion. In this way I can see where your responses are coming from, and I can inform you where I think you are missing the point. I will cut down on the generalizations, but I need you to cooperate as well. Now you may feel free to respond to my posts.

Hi, Open MInd. Neither do I.But, each one of your posts to me began with an accusation that I cannot read. How long do you expect me to just take that before I start lashing back? And, why does it suddenly become rude when it's directed at you?I'm only 26, and I still have a big ego and a lot to prove. What's your excuse? So, why should I believe that your argument has any merit if it's based on an interpretation of the Torah? That's right. And your response does not answer this. The dichotomy is "flood" vs "poof," not "now" vs "later." God could zot them in a hundred years just as easily as He could zot them now, and, in both cases, it would still be "in an instant."So, if the period for repentance is the important part, why couldn't God have told Noah to spend 100 years warning the world about the coming "Poof" rather than the coming "Flood"? This way would have been just as effective at slaughtering all the evil things in the world, would still have provided the time for repentance, and, since Noah wouldn't have had to spend time building the ark, he would have had more time to preach repentance (potentially shortening the length of the wait in the process).Bluescat wants to know why creationists believe that God essentially poofs the universe into existence, then switches to using natural phenomena for His wonders and miracles (in this case, the Flood).

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-BluejayDarwin loves you.

Hi Open Mind. Firstly, I would like to say that I appreciate your detailed response. You have clearly put a lot of effort into t, and I hope that if I must describe your arguments in less than flattering terms, you will not take it too personally. You are the one who first brought up the issue of warnings, in Message 22, where you said; Make your mind up. If the entire reason for the flood was to avail humanity with a chance to repent then the believability of the warning is of obvious and vital importance. Giving a chance to repent but not giving a sufficient warning would be equivalent to giving no chance for repentance at all. There is a major problem with your explanation here. If proof of God’s existence denies free will and if this is undesirable to God, why does he reveal himself to Noah? God spoke to him directly. According to your argument, this should leave Noah, God’s favourite, without the requisite free will. This is absurd. Again, you can’t have it both ways. This is clearly false, for two reasons. Firstly, your argument about proof of God denying humanity free will does not follow. A revelation of the divine would certainly make the choice to worship God a no-brainer, but the choice to not worship would still exist. That’s what free will is. You said yourself that people at the time of the flood completely believed in God, they just chose not to follow his law or worship him. You can’t have it both ways Open Mind.
Secondly, the idea that a global flood could be construed as a natural phenomenon is bizarre. Even by the scientifically stunted standards of the time 40 days and nights of rain would have stuck out as being very far from normal. What’s more, the fact that Noah’s family were warned in advance what would happen rubbishes any idea of them explaining the flood by reference to natural forces (as a side note, the dichotomy between natural and supernatural forces seems quite a modern concept for such primitive and superstitious people). If my father warned me that God was going to flood the world and we needed to build an ark, I would think that he had lost it. When the world really was flooded however, I would convert on the spot! What more proof of God could one require? Even a personal appearance from the big man himself could be more easily explained away (as a hallucination).If the flood is only necessary to preserve the free will of Noah’s family, then it is not fitting for that purpose. Get real. Noah was warned by God himself! What more evidence could you want?! Don’t be silly. It says no such thing in the Torah. Jewish oral tradition may say this, but unless you can provide a citation to substantiate this claim, it is indistinguishable from something you just made up. It is no use you simply claiming that “Jewish oral tradition says...”, without providing a citation to back up this claim. I am not accusing you of anything, this is simply how a debate works. If you want to cite a source, you have to provide a proper citation.Further, what Jewish oral tradition may say is of no importance to me. It is merely supposition, made after the event, a vast collection of post hoc rationalisation. So far as I am concerned, it is of no more value than your opinion, my opinion or anyone else’s opinion. If you want to make references to the arguments made by Jewish oral tradition, fair enough, but don’t expect me to attach any more significance to their opinions than I would attach to “This bloke I met in the pub says..”. If this is the case, then why does God so often talk directly to his favourite humans? By your argument, he is turning all his most favoured into robots. Tough. You don’t seem to understand what free will is. Free will is not “free unless you do something that displeases me”. That is not freedom. Evil destroys fish?! The fiends! As far as I can tell this is just waffle. You have no idea whether the soul even exists, let alone whether it can be corrupted. Even if it can be corrupted, that is God’s fault; he is the one who made t after all. God seems to be blaming everyone else for his own shoddy design here. He must have known from the beginning that all this would happen and yet he deliberately engineered it, before acting as though the failure of his little project is some kind of surprise. Pretty much. Unfortunately, this line of argument has been deemed off-topic by Adminnemooseus, so I’m not really able to pursue it further. Suffice to say I don’t agree with your concept of what free will is or how it works. Yup. Unfortunately, I think we are veering off-topic with this as well. All I will say here is that I do not accept God-based definitions of morality, but that really is another argument. It certainly is pretty nonsensical . I am glad that you have admitted that your original claim about what the Torah says is not true though. Well, (surprise, surprise) it’s not making much sense over here. By what mechanism can human evil corrupt a starfish? Or a mole, or a stick insect? This is a blatantly absurd claim that would appear unnecessarily far-fetched in a bad sci-fi novel. It’s just silly. What could the concept of evil possibly even mean for lichen?Further, free will (the only reason you have so far provided for a flood) doesn’t seem to stand out as being relevant to animals and plants. Why not just cure them? God could surely just snap his divine fingers and solve this problem, without any need for death. You did say that he doesn’t enjoy killing his creations. If my pet animals have a problem, I take them to the vet. I would only euthanize them if there was no other option, a contingency that clearly could not apply to God... Something he could easily have achieved by simply moving the Noah family to a physical location where they would have remained unmolested. Again, no need for mass murder. What, is God short of time or something? This argument has him coming across as somewhat impatient for a supreme being. A completely unbelievable proposition. As you doubtless know, reliable birth control did not exist until very recently. There is no way that such ancient people could have practised effective birth control and any argument that rests upon such a glaring technological anachronism is ridiculous. You might as well suggest that they had hovercrafts.
Unless you can provide some kind of evidence that there were no babies at the time of the flood (hint; you can’t), then the assumption must be that there were, just like during every other period of history. If you want to base your argument upon bizarre and improbable propositions, you need to back them up with evidence, otherwise, they are irrelevant.Now, I have to pull you up on something here. If you are going to quote me, please quote me properly, do not alter what I wrote. This is what I’m talking about; I have bolded the relevant word, just for clarity. Now you may find the word “sex” somehow offensive, but I don’t. If you quote me, please leave my words intact. I chose my words carefully and would thank you for leaving my prose unaltered, especially since the version you quote makes absolutely no sense. If you absolutely must shy away from writing the word “sex” (weird behaviour in my opinion), please insert {expletive deleted} or something, so that people know that you have altered my quote. Yet you can’t even bare to write the word... Ooh, touché! OK, let’s drop this side topic shall we. It’s not really relevant. I am not talking about loving parents, or any other parents. I am referring to God’s massacre of innocent babies and your absurd rationalisation of this based upon a baby-less world (or almost baby-less). This idea of no babies to kill is a pathetic attempt to get God off the hook. So far as I am concerned this is a very dishonest way of hiding the inaccuracies and outrages of the Torah from those who would question them. You are aware aren’t you that the exact same claim is made for the Koran? The Koran is infallible, but can only be properly understood in the original Arabic, indeed, it can only be fully understood by a native speaker of Arabic. If we are to accept your claims for the Torah, how are we to dismiss the same claims when they are made for the Koran? Are you a native Arabic speaker? Have you read the Koran in the original Arabic? If not, how do you dismiss Islam?If there are translation differences between the modern English-language translations (which I acknowledge there are), then please make reference to them on a case-by-case basis, don’t just dismiss the translations with a single arrogant gesture. Not what I was saying at all. There is no such thing as a “true atheist”, as you note. The only thing that unites atheists is a shared lack of belief in God(s). All I was saying was that I was unsure whether Agobot self-described as an atheist or not. It’s not really important though. Real or not, I don’t care what other atheists think. I am debating you, not anyone else. Bring me your opinions or discuss mine. Other peoples are irrelevant and I am not necessarily going to support other peoples’ opinions just because they are atheists. That is exactly what I believe, but I think that we are veering off-topic once again, so I’m going to leave this aside in case we bring down the wrath of Moose upon us! Well I think it’s best if you don’t mention it. That is another kettle of fish entirely, let’s not go there.In summation, I do not see anything in your posts that would necessitate a flood, rather than a more direct miracle. Your free will-based arguments are self-contradictory. Your other arguments require evidence that is not forthcoming. In short, I remain unconvinced.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade