Implausibility of the flood tale

[Zzyzx]

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In a thread discussing the different lengths of time Genesis assigns to the Earth being flooded, mention was made of other implausibilities of the flood tale -- including:

1) A wooden boat much larger that any known to exist and built by a 500 year old man
2) Millions of animals gathered from all over the world and redistributed afterward
3) A billion cubic miles of water sudden appearing -- then disappearing afterward
4) Eight people providing for millions of diverse animals (some carnivores) for a year
5) Repopulating all the continents with humans and other animals in a few thousand years (and producing the great genetic diversity known to exist).

Are those (and other) implausibilities sufficient grounds to conclude that in all likelihood the flood tale is fable, legend, myth, folklore or fiction?

If not, why not? What rational explanation can be made for them?

[shushi_boi]

[Replying to post 240 by Danmark]

My last response was deleted from the recent website crash. Well a summarized version of it would be that although there are strong proofs that argue that Christianity is not written as a myth, but even if it was for the sake of argument, it doesn't invalidate it nor other worldview, I actually believe all religions emerged from a common ancestor one that was around africa or the middle east, but many of them veered off from the original revelation so they might have some truths but ultimately I believe that this revelation is still alive and well today.

Aside from that, my open disposition to the supernatural is not a way to dance around the issue as I have proven that whether one is naturalist or not, that our current limited scientific knowledge in order for there to be progress we must be open to logical and consistent possibilities and truths such as revelations.

As for psuedo science, I think for the naturalist atheists, I think this does more harm than good in the case for the belief in a single ancestor of all organism that I pointed out for neo darwinian evolution or the zero point energy arguments that atheists believe, in the sense that the universe (matter and energy) came from nothing or existed eternally. By all means, one could try to use this sword but its double bladed and I already provided how I reason the bible and science through this criteria,

[Replying to post 238 by shushi_boi]

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 240 by Danmark]

My last response was deleted from the recent website crash. Well a summarized version of it would be that although there are strong proofs that argue that Christianity is not written as a myth, but even if it was for the sake of argument, it doesn't invalidate it nor other worldview, I actually believe all religions emerged from a common ancestor one that was around africa or the middle east, but many of them veered off from the original revelation so they might have some truths but ultimately I believe that this revelation is still alive and well today.

Aside from that, my open disposition to the supernatural is not a way to dance around the issue as I have proven that whether one is naturalist or not, that our current limited scientific knowledge in order for there to be progress we must be open to logical and consistent possibilities and truths such as revelations.

As for psuedo science, I think for the naturalist atheists, I think this does more harm than good in the case for the belief in a single ancestor of all organism that I pointed out for neo darwinian evolution or the zero point energy arguments that atheists believe, in the sense that the universe (matter and energy) came from nothing or existed eternally. By all means, one could try to use this sword but its double bladed and I already provided how I reason the bible and science through this criteria,

[Replying to post 238 by shushi_boi]

Your belief:
"I actually believe all religions emerged from a common ancestor one that was around africa or the middle east, but many of them veered off from the original revelation so they might have some truths but ultimately I believe that this revelation is still alive and well today,"
tho' unsupported actually provides an argument against accepting the myths of Genesis as divine revelation.
Also, you've given no evidence to support the claim that the original myth was a 'revelation.' In short, your thesis admits that myths and stories develop, change and are ultimately sourced from earlier myths. The Sumerian myth of Gilgamesh predates the Hebrew flood myth. It is obviously derivative.

What is the basis for concluding that Genesis correctly documents the original story or that it was a 'revelation?' The Pentateuch was not in its final form until the 500's BCE. I'm not aware of any scholar who puts even the original text of Genesis earlier than the 1400's BCE.

Sumerian mythology predates this. What is the evidence of earlier 'revelation' that was the source of any of this?

[shushi_boi]

[Replying to post 242 by Danmark]

Hi

For most of the early faith that was adopted into Judaism, early faiths were oral traditions passed down through oral transition where individuals would recite these tales for their entire lives and pass it down to their descendants. When you assume that age has authority for truth but when archaeologists find older findings, it only means that so far we only have an estimation, not a definitive response as to which early faith was the real revelation, or in this case 'original'.

Judaism, if one considers Abraham the first Jew, then Judaism began approximately 3767 years ago. If one considers Judaism as starting with the revelation at Sinai, then its about 3317 years. Judaism, the early Egyptian faith and Sumerian faith emerged around the same time during the 3rd millennium BC. The Jewish faith and society is known to have existed really early as these other faiths and ancient mesopotamian, Egyptian, Aramean, and canaanite religion furnishes some interesting parallels. Although you might call them all myths I don't treat them as such, but I look at them through a historical perspective and all of these forefathers of religion all documented many similar historical events. I can go on but I pause momentarily before I start jumping from different points and other points.

Well if you look at wikipedia you can easily distinguish some of the parallels that I have mentioned;

"Torah" in this instance refers to the Pentateuch (to parallel Chumash, חומש), so called because it consists of five books: Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. It is the core scripture of Judaism and Samaritanism, honored in these religions as the most sacred of scripture.

The fact that Judaism as well as these other early faiths share parallels does not mean that all newer findings are direct copies of older ones, how so? By looking at what these manuscripts say in terms of historical data and comparing them. Its understandable that a formalization of the early faith of Judaism would be difficult to find due to the fact that most of their revelation being orally transmitted rather than written in stone tablets or other non paper like documentation. I could go on on this point but I'll let it rest for now.

As a Christian, I accept the old testament as it builds up to the new testament, but if Christ was truly God, then he is all the verification a Christian would need since he verified the TaNaKh of his day to follow up to the revelation that he would present. That's not to say that there weren't any discrepancies with the Old Testament (the debated verse 1 Sam 6:19), that should not be viewed as the Qur'an (muslims often fight over whether the Qur'an coexisted eternally with God). That's all for now I suppose. Whether Christ was God or not is up for another debate, but this one is clearly tied with that one for the Christian.

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 242 by Danmark]

For most of the early faith that was adopted into Judaism, early faiths were oral traditions passed down through oral transition where individuals would recite these tales for their entire lives and pass it down to their descendants. When you assume that age has authority for truth but when archaeologists find older findings, it only means that so far we only have an estimation, not a definitive response as to which early faith was the real revelation, or in this case 'original'.

Judaism, if one considers Abraham the first Jew, then Judaism began approximately 3767 years ago.

Naturally this must be seen against the backdrop:
"Anatomically modern humans arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago, and reached behavioral modernity about 50,000 years ago."
["Human Evolution by The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program". Human Origins Initiative. Smithsonian Institution.]

'Tradition credits Moses as the author of Genesis, as well as Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and most of Deuteronomy, but modern scholars increasingly see them as a product of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE.'
[Van Seters, John (1998). "The Pentateuch". In Steven L. McKenzie, Matt Patrick Graham. The Hebrew Bible today: an introduction to critical issues. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 9780664256524,
Davies, G.I (1998). "Introduction to the Pentateuch". In John Barton. Oxford Bible Commentary. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198755005.]

So, this oral tradition from a variety of sources was put in its final Jewish form after more than 3000 years of oral tradition. The flood story of course dates from an even earlier date. A similar scenario is likely true for other myths from many cultures, that the stories circulated for millennia before being reduced to writing.

I believe you have previously written the flood story probably first originated from a local flood event, as opposed to the world wide nature of the Genesis account. A local flood is certainly the more likely of the two as germs for the eventual written tale.

Getting back to the question in post 1, I take it you are saying the story in Genesis, tho' not literally true, at least had a historical precursor; and as an overall conclusion then, you would agree the flood story as written in Genesis is implausible?

BTW, considering the vast number of flood myths that come from cultures and continents around the world, isn't it likely that there were many local floods [and still are] that inspired many flood myths independently?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

The alternate conjecture I've heard apologists offer is that 'THE flood' really was an epic global event, and that is why so many diverse and independent cultures have flood mythology; they are all telling about the same catastrophic event. Of course, for this to be true, there had to be hundreds or thousands of Arks to save those who passed the stories on.

[shushi_boi]

[Replying to post 244 by Danmark]

I must really commend you for a great job on outlining your response very well, and there wasn't much disagreement from my end.

To answer some of the points that you raise, whether if I don't take the flood to mean that it was global and if I do so wouldn't it undermine the entirety of scripture's authority for a Christian?

A profound question but this all centers around the meaning of Universal when talking about the flood. Universal may imply global but it doesn't always have to mean global, in the sense of the flood so the text leaves open to this meaning from Hebrew to English. I can go further and explain this single portion but I feel a video instead would be better than me spamming a long response. Hugh Ross, although he's a concordist with scripture (tries to import modern scientific understanding into scripture) some of his views actually hold water if they agree with textual critic's grammatico-historical hermeneutics and historical-critical method hermeneutics, which in the case with the flood it does.


So both the global flood and the universal (local) flood are at the end of the day just interpretations from the very same text, so if one believes that a global flood affirms scriptural authority, I believe the same could be said about the local flood view, on equal pars.

As for the spread of flood stories, I don't claim that every single one came from a common origin, unlike the belief of God. All of mankind emerged from the african and middle eastern regions before they distributed further around the globe. Unlike the belief of God, the flood, a specific tale does share parallels with many other early faiths that mention it to the source which was around the african and middle eastern regions.

Of course in the americas you will find some flood tales as well, but the thing about all of the civilizations of the americas, is that all of the different groups of people arrived from different regions from different times, like in Japan, China, Polynesian Islands, Russia, Northern European Nordic regions, and even Africa and other regions. So with so many different migrants that made it to the Americas at different time periods, they may have either taken tales that may be rooted from the same flood tale from Genesis, or not (depending if they arrived say, around 40,000- 12,000 BCE).

Since the earliest religion emerged from the African and Middle Eastern regions and archeology hasn't given us diffenative proofs yet, we have to go by some of the historical narratives that many of these tales give to us, which so far have aligned pretty well with some historical findings.

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 244 by Danmark]

I must really commend you for a great job on outlining your response very well, and there wasn't much disagreement from my end.

To answer some of the points that you raise, whether if I don't take the flood to mean that it was global and if I do so wouldn't it undermine the entirety of scripture's authority for a Christian?

Thank you; however, that is exactly the problem. I sometimes feel it is unfair that non theists can put the issue that way. The theist is reasonable and agrees that some of the passages are symbolic or to some extent mythical or anything short of literal and perfect; and then the non theist jumps on that response and makes just the argument you suggest.
mea culpa To some extent absolute authority is lost when the apologist gives even an inch, no matter how reasonable that inch may be.

A profound question but this all centers around the meaning of Universal when talking about the flood. Universal may imply global but it doesn't always have to mean global, in the sense of the flood so the text leaves open to this meaning from Hebrew to English. I can go further and explain this single portion but I feel a video instead would be better than me spamming a long response. Hugh Ross, although he's a concordist with scripture (tries to import modern scientific understanding into scripture) some of his views actually hold water if they agree with textual critic's grammatico-historical hermeneutics and historical-critical method hermeneutics, which in the case with the flood it does.


So both the global flood and the universal (local) flood are at the end of the day just interpretations from the very same text, so if one believes that a global flood affirms scriptural authority, I believe the same could be said about the local flood view, on equal pars.

As for the spread of flood stories, I don't claim that every single one came from a common origin, unlike the belief of God. All of mankind emerged from the african and middle eastern regions before they distributed further around the globe. Unlike the belief of God, the flood, a specific tale does share parallels with many other early faiths that mention it to the source which was around the african and middle eastern regions.

Of course in the americas you will find some flood tales as well, but the thing about all of the civilizations of the americas, is that all of the different groups of people arrived from different regions from different times, like in Japan, China, Polynesian Islands, Russia, Northern European Nordic regions, and even Africa and other regions. So with so many different migrants that made it to the Americas at different time periods, they may have either taken tales that may be rooted from the same flood tale from Genesis, or not (depending if they arrived say, around 40,000- 12,000 BCE).

Since the earliest religion emerged from the African and Middle Eastern regions and archeology hasn't given us diffenative proofs yet, we have to go by some of the historical narratives that many of these tales give to us, which so far have aligned pretty well with some historical findings.

At least Ross is an 'old Earth creationist.' Still, I confess to being turned off by these efforts to somehow rescue the stories of Genesis via attempts at interpretation and scientific explanation. For example, I'm not sure Ross makes his point well when he talks about "all animals" really meaning only birds and mammals.

Despite the 'authority' opening it gives the critic, I think the apologists' best bet is to concede the mythic nature of the creation, flood, and Babel stories [even while agreeing there is some original kernel of truth that inspired the myth.

I see no reason why the wise apologist cannot concede the mythical nature of these stories, agree they were man's attempts to understand God and nature at the time they were written, and still find a core of ultimate truth along the lines of the person of Jesus. True this entails a concession regarding the absolute authority of the Bible, but perhaps it is worth it in retaining some credibility.

[H.sapiens]

Where there to have been such a flood the bone beds would be ordered by habitat, not as they in fact are, by age. One need look no further to find proof to reject the biblical flood hypothesis.

[JLB32168]

How many threads that address the flood can be on one website?

[Danmark]

How many threads that address the flood can be on one website?

Theoretically, there is no limit.

Wouldn't you agree:
I see no reason why the wise apologist cannot concede the mythical nature of these stories, agree they were man's attempts to understand God and nature at the time they were written, and still find a core of ultimate truth along the lines of the person of Jesus. True this entails a concession regarding the absolute authority of the Bible, but perhaps it is worth it in retaining some credibility.

I see no reason why the Christian cannot accept the truth of the Bible, but also recognize myth, symbolism, and literature for what it is without compromising either their beliefs or their credibility.

[Zzyzx]

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How many threads that address the flood can be on one website?

The supply of Believers is refreshed periodically and new people often present the flood tale as though it was truthful and accurate. It takes repetition to deal with that contention and to show the glaring faults in claims of literal truth to those who think it actually happened as described in Genesis.