The Great Flood

Originally posted by twhitehead
Interesting. I must admit I do not know any Lozi folk tales. So has anyone checked whether or not they have any myths regarding fire, drought or other catastrophe? Maybe the number of flood myths has to do with the number of flood researchers.

Folklore motifs have been the subject of exhaustive research. There are many myths regarding fire, drought, etc, but they tend to work out differently (the chameleon story). I'm not sure that a naturalistic explanation is the way to go.

From a story-telling point of view, I think it would be difficult to tell a convincing tale of surviving universal conflagration. "And the Lord told Noah to build an asbestos suit ... "

Originally posted by Palynka
I understand. I'm trying to poke holes in the mitochondrial connection because I don't find it very plausible. I guess that a requirement for such a connection is the existence of a proto-language.

This is the moment of decision: stick with the historical method or write a best-selling fiction disguised as fact!

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
And harping on about the bilyuns and bilyuns of folks as done got killed by GOD is equally feeble. That was actually my point. Destroying the entire population of the world by drowning is no more morally reprehensible than executing Lot's wife by means of crystallization.

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."

The point of my post was to force literalist Christians to regard the victims of the flood as something more than a statistic. I wanted to convey it as a single tragedy repeated millions of times over. They weren't just a nameless group of generic people who were "wicked and corrupt". They were each individual human beings.

Can you walk through your neighborhood and look at the people there, shoveling their driveways, bringing in the groceries, or walking their dogs, can you look at them and think that they all deserve to drown in a cataclysmic flood? Can you look at your own mother, your own daughter, or everyone else that you have ever known or met, and say to them that they all deserve to drown? Each and every one? This is the callous, morally bankrupt position that you are forced into if you accept a literal interpretation of the Great Flood and claim that God acted rightly.

Secondly, I wanted to avoid becoming entangled in situational ethics by concentrating solely on the inexcusable act of genocide. Was killing Lot's wife morally reprehensible? I suppose. But would it have been a morally acceptable act to murder Hitler and thereby prevent WWII? Is re-routing that proverbial train to kill one person, instead of seven, a moral act? Or is it the lesser of two evils? Could killing Lot's wife have been the lesser of two evils? Probably not, but it muddies the waters. Genocide, on the other hand, can never be the lesser of two evils. It is always the greatest evil. No greater good can possibly be reached by utilizing genocide. This is evident even within the bible. People were wicked and corrupt before the flood and they remain wicked and corrupt today*. The flood accomplished nothing except millions of individual human tragedies.

*At least they are wicked and corrupt by life negating moral standards of literalist Christians. I would maintain that people, by and large, are basically decent and good folk who do not deserve to be drowned.

Originally posted by rwingett
... that God acted rightly.....

Here is a basic fact which you are ignoring:

Right and wrong can only be established with all the information before you.

Can you truthfully say that you know all the facts pertaining to all the people that drowned, I suspect the only thing you can say is that they drowned.

Originally posted by rwingett
This is the callous, morally bankrupt position that you are forced into if you accept a literal interpretation of the Great Flood and claim that God acted rightly.

You are missing the most fundamental aspect of any theistic framework that includes an afterlife. If the afterlife truly exists it completely changes the morality surrounding death. I see no reason whatsoever to consider causing death of a person destined to go to heaven as inherently immoral. If a person is destined to go to hell then I see the decision to send him there as far more immoral than the decision to send him there early. If God can rightly judge people of deserving hell then surely a loss of a few years of life is insignificant in terms of punishment. Its as if you are looking at a Judge condemning a man to life imprisonment and one stroke of the cane and you want us to focus on the one stroke of the cane as being inherently immoral.

For me, the reason I would have for partially agreeing with you and arguing against a Theist is that although their theological framework results in my above observations, they do not act as if that was the case. They claim (when pressed) that the truly sinful aspect of murder is due entirely to the fact that God has declared it as such whilst simultaneously claiming that (and acting as if) it is obviously inherently immoral.
I personally can see no reason why a theist should consider the murder of a good Christian destined for heaven to be any more sinful than any other sin such as telling lies or homosexual acts. I know of no place in the Bible where it gives sins ratings in terms of severity.

Originally posted by twhitehead
If the afterlife truly exists it completely changes the morality surrounding death. I see no reason whatsoever to consider causing death of a person destined to go to heaven as inherently immoral.

Is it morally permissible to rape a woman provided you give her ten million dollars afterwards?

Is it morally permissible to rape a woman now provided you are going to kill her in ten minutes anyway?

Originally posted by dystoniac
No, children are precious and innocent in the eyes of Jersus; they will inherit the Kingdom of God; we adults can inherit paradise ONLY if we become as children and accept Jesus as Lord

Any adult ignorant of Jesus' teachings, for whatever reason(s), shall have the chance to choose between Heaven or Hell. I don't know how God will do this, but through God all things ARE possible.

If children are precious and innocent, then why did god drown them in the flood?

Edit: Nevermind; I read your response to LemonJello.

Imagine the terror of being drowned in a worldwide flood: You see the water start to rise; you climb whatever house or mountain you have nearby, but the water still rises. Eventually, you can climb no further, and you are swept away in the current. You swim until your energy is exhausted. If you are a parent, you can see your children sinking, and hear them screaming for help, or see them still trapped in the house underwater, and yet you are utterly powerless to save them. You can see and hear other people suffering the same fate all around you. You feel yourself fall below the waves.

You cannot save yourself, those you care about, or even the strangers you've never met. As far as you know, this is the end of the human race.

Now, ask yourself: would a 'loving' god really be capable of such cruelty?

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Is it morally permissible to rape a woman provided you give her ten million dollars afterwards?

Is it morally permissible to rape a woman now provided you are going to kill her in ten minutes anyway?

Neither is morally permissible, though the first could have complications.
But I make my judgment on the basis that rape causes pain (mental and physical usually), and that rape is by definition against the will of the victim. I generally consider causing pain without permission to be immoral.
In your first question however, if we adjust it slightly and ask: Is it morally permissible to rape a woman which thus gains her ten million dollars afterwards that she would not have obtained otherwise (and which you know of no other way of obtaining for her) then it becomes a far more complex question. I think most people can find circumstances in which they are willing to cause pain to a victim without permission from the victim in the belief that they are assisting the victim and that their course of action is morally good. In fact I think every parent knows this.

Originally posted by rwingett
This is for the Christians on the site who think that the bible is literally true, or that the Great Flood actually occurred.

[b]Gen 7:21-24
[i]And all the flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds, cattle, beast, all swarming creatures that swarm upon the earth, and every man; everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life d ...[text shortened]... cannot exist, or that he is a genocidal monster who is more worthy of condemnation than praise.[/b]

When I first saw this post a few days ago I began to reply but decided to wait and think about it for a while. To be honest I'm not sure where you're coming from or just how to reply. So I'll just pick at it and see where it takes me.


"Unless you can visualize what they looked like, or imagine what they were doing on the day the rain started, or empathize with the terror each and every one of them felt as the flood waters rose above their necks while they watched helplessly as their friends and loved ones drowned all around them, unless you can do these things then there is something fundamentally wrong with your humanity."

Yes. It's true. Anyone who cannot sympathise with those who went through the horror of being washed away in a flood have something fundamentally wrong with their humanity. I don't think it's too difficult to visualize that what we see in the world today isn't much different than it was at the time of the flood. People are much the same the world over.

But here's the part that troubles me about the tenor of your post. I think you have the mistaken idea that because Christians believe in the Bible and what it says, that somehow that makes them unsympathetic to the suffering of the vast majority of the human race because the Bible describes a God that killed everyone but 8.


"Magnify that at least a hundred times and you begin to comprehend the magnitude of the carnage wrought by God in the Great Flood."

No. From my understanding the human population of the earth at the time of the flood was in the Billions. Imagine if the oceans were to wash across the contenants today. According to my understanding of what the Bible has to say, that is that the water covered the earth for months, there would be nothing left to see after the waters receded. Everything would have been destroyed. No trace of any flesh would have remained in one piece. Churned up, demolished, ground to mush, and then despersed across millions of square miles.


"A god of infinite love and compassion is simply incompatible with the genocidal act of drowning all but eight of the earth’s populace. Neither “free will” nor “Satan” makes the incompatibility any less glaring. For my part, I can only conclude that your definition of god is incoherent and that he therefore cannot exist, or that he is a genocidal monster who is more worthy of condemnation than praise."

You have misunderstood and misinterpreted the Bible.
I hope you understand what I mean. I think you have made it too complicated. You probably won't except this simple explaination, but I'll offer it anyway.

You, and anyone else who believes the way you do, should break it down to just a few simple concepts.

#1. God is Holy and infinite in knowledge and wisdom.

#2. The universe is His creation.

#3. Without God there is no life.

You must first prioritize your thinking along these lines before you can begin to understand the Bible.

Originally posted by josephw
No. From my understanding the human population of the earth at the time of the flood was in the Billions.

I am curious, why would you think that? You do realize that without certain technological advantages it would be extremely difficult to support a population of that size. If people were that technologically advanced why is there absolutely no trace of them whatsoever? Was it a magical flood that dissolved iron tools and fertilizer factories?

You, and anyone else who believes the way you do, should break it down to just a few simple concepts.

#1. God is Holy and infinite in knowledge and wisdom.

#2. The universe is His creation.

#3. Without God there is no life.

You must first prioritize your thinking along these lines before you can begin to understand the Bible.
On the whole I agree with you. I would like to just caution you to remember to do exactly the opposite when trying to convince us atheists of the goodness of God. I too often find that Christians assume that Gods goodness is self evident when in fact they are actually deriving it by definition as you show above.

Originally posted by Rajk999
Here is a basic fact which you are ignoring:

Right and wrong can only be established with all the information before you.

Can you truthfully say that you know all the facts pertaining to all the people that drowned, I suspect the only thing you can say is that they drowned.

…Right and wrong can only be established with all the information before you....…

Err, actually it cannot.
It has been well established in formal logic that you cannot deduce any moral proposition from any amoral proposition (when I say “proposition” in this context, I am NOT talking about “proposition” as in “proposed action” but rather “proposition” as in a statement that can only be either true or false and as defined in formal logic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition ).
Thus, if “all the information before you” includes the information that “torture causes pain and suffering” then you cannot logically deduce from this amoral proposition; “torture causes pain and suffering” the moral proposition “to torture is immoral” etc.

P.S. this doesn’t mean I personally would agree with torture etc -I would disagree with such things for purely emotional reasons rather than “moral” reasons for I don’t think there is such thing as “moral”!

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
.. I don’t think there is such thing as “moral”!

So you agree that Rwingett was wrong to claim that God is immoral.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Neither is morally permissible, though the first could have complications.
But I make my judgment on the basis that rape causes pain (mental and physical usually), and that rape is by definition against the will of the victim. I generally consider causing pain without permission to be immoral.
In your first question however, if we adjust it slightly and ...[text shortened]... victim and that their course of action is morally good. In fact I think every parent knows this.

if the victim benefits from the money and finds it acceptable, then it is no longer rape but prostitution. rape is when the victim takes a dump on 1 million and burns the other 9 and then presses charges against the scum that did it. (or kills him which would be quite acceptable)

PS. killing the rapist, although quite acceptable, might cause some problems because of vigilantism, of taking the law into your own hands. messy and complicated stuff. better stick to just pressing charges. and lobbying for harsher punishments

and yes, i agree, some situations exists where causing pain to a victim for their own good is acceptable. very few. like forcibly committing a drug adict to rehab. however, in those cases, the "victim" is hardly a victim.

Originally posted by Rajk999
So you agree that Rwingett was wrong to claim that God is immoral.

IF there exists a god, correct.

-in my view, NOTHING is either "moral" or "immoral".
Therefore, IF there exists a god, then it is neither "moral" nor "immoral".

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
if the victim benefits from the money and finds it acceptable, then it is no longer rape but prostitution.

What if the victim does not find it acceptable but has no choice in the matter. Further you believe it will be beneficial to the victim even though the victim doesn't.
What if the crime was something smaller like taking naked photos or something less sexually charged like a beating?