Do you believe their was a worldwide flood?

That's just crazy, are some people trying to act like the flood happened without a miraculous cause?!

It was either a miracle of God or not. You either have faith or not. You can't go looking for scientific proof for everything because God and the supreme Evil have power over reality.

Either you have faith in a Loving God. Or you are just in a hopeless entropic existence of death and suffering.

Either you believe in natural law: "Strong survive and weak perish." like a Nazi as that is the most efficient government type that reflects atheist beliefs.

Or the spiritual law: "All life is valuable and we should love each other." As most religious people do, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hinduism, etc. with the exception of Islam, in which only Muslim life is valuable.

Either you have a soul and care about other people, or the soul doesn't exist and you should be merciless and ruthless with compassion only being a sign of weakness and mercy incomprehensible.

 

Are you a Christian?

 

I don't believe in labels. I believe in a loving God, and don't believe he is restricted to a label either. God is much more than just Christianity, but of all the religions I've examined, Christianity best explains his loving nature. Jesus, existence or not, is a great metaphor for God's love and willingness to sacrifice for us. It's not like God needed to defeat Sin, He controls all time and space.

Either you believe in the natural law, "Strong survive and weak perish" or the spiritual law "All life is valuable, so we should love each other." It's pretty simple though apparently you are struggling in your heart with the concepts, trying to label me as someone with an agenda which I'm not, in order to avoid coming to terms with the truth.

P.S. When I looked at Mohammad, I didn't see love, but a violent conqueror (of Arabia). When I looked at Moses, I didn't see love, but a ruthless protector of his people. When I looked at Buddha, I saw a disillusioned man who was upset at the materialism around him, and finally came to a peace by disconnecting from it all, but disconnection felt like the wrong approach. When I looked at Jesus, I saw the complete love that I've known in my personal life as "God". Historical issues aside, the message is great, liberating, and I've never felt so happy in my life. I feel every day with a renewed joy and shudder to think of going back to my depressed agnostic past.

 

There is not enough water on earth to cover all the dry land. So of course the answer is no.

 

I'll refer back to the discovery channel on this one, which made several excellent points in this regards.

There is evidence of a localized flood in the middle east about the time noah's ark would have occurred.

The noah's ark story was added to the bible after the fact and was not part of the original writings.

There is not enough water to cover all the dry land (mountain tops of everest, et al) included. I'm not sure if I believe this, but if there was enough evaporated water in the atmosphere, polar caps, etc to flood the world, we'd all be dead because of the extreme air pressure that would result.

Noah's ark is most likely an allegory of an event that happened. Possibly a severe flood that killed lots of people and was expanded upon to make a good life lesson.

 

Yes, in the allegorical sense.

 

Unless God makes it so. Not forgetting the Bible teaches God is dynamic in power. The Bible also teaches that through Jesus "all other things were created". Those things include the earth and the universe. If God can create all these things, how simple would producing enough water to flood the earth be?

Col

 

not sure....it may have not been exactly as it was in the Bible (as their are other versions recorded), but I do believe that there was a flood...it could have just been a flood to a specific region, and the inhabitants of that region might have thought the whole world was flooded....we will all have to ask God when we get to heaven.

 

Well, I won't be going there so you can ask him for me. I'll just remain here on paradise earth like I am supposed to

 

will do...

 

So he made a lot of water, then took it away, ok.

 

I believe He made it rain and caused a deluge. The water rose killing everything except for water animals.

 

Even the water animals would die as temperatures would change as polar waters mix with tropical waters and fresh water becomes salty, and saltiness drops with all of the new fresh.

Global flood = death to all land animals, all flying animals, all plant life, and most sea life.

And yet we see a world around us with an abundance of variety, specific geographical localisations of plant and animal life, and no evidence of a global flood.

If 'God' did in fact miraculously create the extra water for the flood (or miraculously flattened the earth) then he would also need to miraculously fix everything after the fact, because it quite clearly didn't happen. But if God did infact make a flood to kill everything, and then put everything back as it was, I think we have to be forced to question the sanity of this divine being.

 

and Noah and his family of course...and all the animals in the ark too. Otherwise, we would not be here today to talk about it.

Col

 

I have to agree with the Discovery channel on this one as well...chances are is that it was a flash flood in a specific area and the people that lived there thought it was a "flooded world" as opposed to a flooded region.

 

That is without a doubt what has happened here d16man.

I still find it astonishing that people cling to mythology so strongly. Particularly when it is blatently apparent what has happened. The Jews were a tribe of people trying to stay unified as a group and survive in a world where they are surrounded by potential enemies. They formed oral traditions which dictated to them how to live to be succesful in this world, how they should interact with each other, with their political neighbours, and how they should work with the earth in general. In order for this set of oral traditions to be respected, they were made out to be 'holy', above repreoach, unquestionable. And no doubt it was through a process of evolution that the 'One God' concept was inevitably applied to these guidelines for life.

"Why should I do what you tell me?"
"Because these words which i pass down to you come from "God" himself, the creator of everything. You may question me and my wisdom, but you can't question the creator of wisdom himself!"

Smart, effective.

And now we have the current state of affairs where the entire world is full of people stupid enough to think that the traditions of a small tribe in the middle east is actually relevent to them today in a modern world.

 

I was assuming that was obvious.

 

Sanity of the divine being? Please read the Bible.

 

Read the Bible? I guess you didn't even look at that link I posted earlier did you? The Bible has been well and truely read.

So, for the everyone's sake, here's another Link to the Skeptics Annoted Bible. Last link was directly to the 'Absurdities' tag page, but any of the tags make for good reading. I recommend Cruelty and violence, contradictions, and 'family values'. However, here are a few good selections from the absurdities:

and of course, this could go on for years.

 

Chances? So, you are speaking about the odds then. In other words, you have no idea really. Not being mean here. Just trying to understand your basis of theory.

Col