Questions on the Flood for TWD39 (or any theist)
Offline 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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2 Peter 3:6 -- NT Reference Supplemental -- See :: Image
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re :: But if the salt have lost its' savor, wherewith shall it be salted?
If you want data that could be used as a tentative support of the actual pin-pointing, to line-up with that of a far more ancient date (for such an event on any scale)? I guess you would. One would consider significantly less concentration of dissolved salts (mainly NaCl) in the water, huh ? A spike in desalination through the process of introduction of indescribable vast amounts of H2O, according to the story,.
See :: Image
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According to the best calculations I was able to see and make, which in turn could begin to help you to look into obtaining data, about you guessed it, it's the water and a-lot more . . ? (The bold assertion(s) are often made, matter-a-factly, there would be no desalination of world oceans. But, The numbers aren't cited to back up the claim however).
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Prov 4 .. Therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting, get understanding!
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I think we're forgetting the bigger picture here, that in that particular situation, God wanted to destroy the world! Plain and clear. It is apparent that humanity had gotten to such a level of sin and whatever that God had been troubled enough to decide to take action to destroy everything.
I'm not saying there weren't 1000 different ways God could have gone about it, but what I'm saying is that this was the best way out of the 1000 for Gods intentions... The pillar of salt you're talking about is discussing one individual who decided to go back into what we're figuring is a volcano. I'm sure she wasn't the only one turned into a pillar of salt.
Instead of going back on his word, God gave humanity a 2nd chance through Noah and decided to start over with Him instead of scraping the human blueprint altogether.
you like to jump to conclusions fast don't you. Is that your only way of defending your understanding? How about doing some research before concluding assumptions on my part... where in the Bible does it say God stopped intervening?
To answer your question: Genesis 4:5-7; "but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard, so Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the Lord said to Cain, 'Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it."
Despite the intervention and explanation, Cain went on to kill his brother anyway,
The chapter goes onto show that God punishes Cain for killing his brother and thus the progression of sin continued. Evidence that God intervened with Cain and likely others of his decent before people became so corrupt. He then announced a limitation of time before God was not going to be with man anymore suggesting that His presence was with them in a way that it is not now.
you said lets assume those points weren't there... without those points, you would be right, but with those points, the implication is pretty clear. I am not making assumptions, I am empirically concluding based on evidence and cross referencing throughout scripture. There is no indication that it was ever different.
I think it's pretty clear he wanted it to happen.
without the parents consent, that would be kidnapping.
Just to be clear: are you asserting that kidnapping children (specifically to avoid killing them) is morally as bad or worse than drowning them?
I'm suggesting that it is very likely that if Noah did such a thing that the parents refused to let him take them... Noah likely didn't knowing that would be the case in the first place... God would have known that too.
consider for a moment you're a parent... You've done countless bad things in your life, maybe even to your child, but you still love your child.. are you going to let some stranger take your child and put them on this boat with all kinds of possibly dangerous creatures to save them from a flood? Sounds a little cookoo and I likely wouldn't have been ok with that.
keep in mind what we're continuing to discuss is purely hypothetical because we honestly dont' know what the situation was with these children. I've heard of parents that would threaten to shoot their children if anyone tried to take them from them... are you suggesting these parents wouldn't have tried the same? I've heard of parents trying to hide their kids from the authorities so that they wouldn't be taken away, would these parents not do the same? Just because they were corrupt doesn't mean they had no concern for their children necessarily. We can hypothetically assume they loved their children still, even if they were sending them off for sacrificial ceremony or what have you.
Strait and true, God wanted humanity gone. They had become so corrupt that God had basically given up trying because it was obvious humans didn't want anything to do with morality and God. Instead of wiping out humanity as a whole, he found good in Noah, so He decided to start over with Noah's family. I know you're concerned about the rest, but their sentence was carried out. The children have their parents to blame for their drowning however you want to look at it.
Considering God being real and the Bible true, if the children were innocent in all of this, then they likely have been living the life with God in heaven, much better than continuing the life they had on Earth. You see it as murder. God would have likely just brought them home. Death unfortunately is the way to life everlasting. Or are you suggesting despite the rest of what God has told us, they're still dead.
You're right
possibly is, context I meant by where you originally stated it and what the focus was/intent of stating it.
yea, well this wasn't a "normal" kind of situation. It is very possible and even likely that God intervened to allow them survival through this situation. some go as far as to say that God guided the animals literally from all over the world to walk onto the ark. I feel that though God did, He used a more natural approach which would be retreating from flood waters to higher ground which happened to be where Noah built the ark... good planning on Gods part obviously there. Point and case, yes God likely had quite a big hand in the whole process, nothing wrong with that perspective. To which extent and how? we can only speculate.