Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis

[Bucky Ball]

The trivialising of death is one of the most dangerous things about religion.

Agreed.  People who do that, are misrepresenting God and his true representatives.

How do we tell who is and who is not a "True Representative" ? That should have a tiny "TM" next to it .... no ?

People here can't seriously still be thinking that the flood myth, (taken straight from Gilgamesh) is a fact do they ?
http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/meso.../tab11.htm

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Wickedness in the World
Genesis 6:1-8

This short passage is basically a prelude to the story of Noah and the Flood. It emphasizes the wickedness of humankind, and how disappointed God is with them. When God first created the world, everything he saw was good, but once sin started to taint the world, the world was no longer perfect in God's eyes. And now, God plans to destroy the whole world with a flood, but not without informing his best buddy Noah first.

The passage also mentions the mysterious "sons of God" and how they mated with human women, giving birth to the even more mysterious Nephilim (i.e., "heroes of old, men of renown"). I know there are plenty of theories out there as to what these sons of God and Nephilim were meant to be. Anyone got a favorite theory they wish to expound on here?

These possibly were the precursors to the greek gods these were the origins of the demi gods and the others. These were giants who's evil we have nothing to compare too, and the reason God took out everything but the descendants of Adam..

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Noah and the Flood
From Genesis 6:9 to Genesis 9:17

It's a story we're all pretty much familiar with. Men and women have pissed off God way too much that he decides to send a great flood to destroy them all (along with the animals and, don't forget, the babies), but not before he warns Noah and gives him some instructions on how to build a ship/ark that would protect him, his family, and multiple pairs of animals of all kinds from the flood. Once all of them were inside the ark, the flood occurs and lasts for many days, killing all living beings that were outside the ark (except for the fish ... and perhaps the bacteria as well). The waters finally recede completely, and Noah and the gang are out of the ark. Noah then sacrifices some poor birds and animals to God who, enjoying the resulting pleasant aroma, promises that he will never ever flood the earth ever again ... but he'll still unleash fire and brimstone when he wishes to.

This was the first story I read from the Bible that disturbed me as a kid, but I can see why this story was told. The ancients had to "understand" that just as God can rain down blessings, he also rains down curses on them. If God was not pleased with them, they had every reason to be shitting their pants at the prospect of being punished by him. Thankfully, this story still provides some relief for the ancients with the promise that they will never have to worry about a great flood covering the whole world and drowning them all in the process, even when they will continue to displease God. So God is cruel, but he is also forgiving and willing to let go of things.

Also, and I hate to say this to literalist Christians, but that ship seemed way too tight to fit all the animals in it. And yes, there are heaps of problems with this passage from a literalist perspective, but I'll leave it to one of you guys to dissect this passage to the full and nitpick the shit out of it (should any of you choose to do so, of course).

Either way, still nice to read, and clearly shows how frightful God was to ancient humans. What do you guys have to say about this story? There's a lot of gems to glean here, anthropologically speaking. What's the deal with the rainbow, for example? The rainbow exists because God needed an occasional reminder of the covenant he made with Noah?

Got to remember two things.

The world here means the know or knowable world it can mean globe but none of the writers would have had access to that information.

2nd the story of the ark is not about the logistics of how one man saved the world from an angry God. it is how God used the faith of one man and his family to justify saving a portion of the world.

Meaning it was not the physical ark that noah built it was the faith and love Noah put in the ark that had God use noah's efforts to save everything.. think Jesus feeding 5000 with 5 loaves and small 2 fish. It was not the physical loaves and fish jesus used it was the gift or the avenue that jesus used to provide for those 5000. meaning it was not the physical fish and bread as they would run out quickly in a crowd of 5000 but they represented the willingness God had to feed those people using such a modest gift. 

The same is true with the ark. Noah did not build the ark out of defiance or out of spite, rather God used Noah's love and expanded the effort to fit the need to save the world. How did the food last? how did the animals not eat each other how did so many fit in such a small place are all logistical questions one would ask a man who defied God... Rather would you ask God if he came down and put everything and every one in his boat? This is literally a case of "God did it."

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And i did feel bad about all those deaths till I realized that death is our birth into eternity. it is not the bad thing we make it out to always be especially for children.

There was no arc. There was no world-wide flood.
The flood myth was taken from Babylonian mythology, in some respects, almost word for word.
http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/meso.../tab11.htm
We know the dating of Gilgamesh. We know when it was copied by the Hebrew priests, (and why). Science has proven that the atmospheric pressure of that amount of water would have been impossible ... along with many other proofs, including that all floods have silt layers, and there simply is no world-wide silt layer.

The Hebrew priests who compiled/wrote the Torah of Moses in Babylon (during the Exile) included many Babylonian myths and themes, and combined traditions from the Northern and Southern Kingdoms of Israel. When the Prophet Ezra brought back the Torah of Moses (including Genesis) from Babylon (along with the letter from the Persian Emperor Artaxerxes, that named the person he would allow to rule in his name in Israel, ... a state he was reconstituting to serve as a buffer-state between his empire and the invading Greeks ... who were after Egypt), it was a new scroll to Israel. They had never seen it or heard of it in the form that was presented by Ezra. The Book of Nehemiah describes the Fall "festival" where, for the first time in human history, what is now called "The Bible" (the first 4 books anyway.. Deuteronomy "just happened" to be *found* in the temple.. LOL) was presented to Israel by Ezra. The "why" the Persian Emperor had need of such a scroll and it's role in the newly reconstituted Kingdom is fascinating and complex. The simple answer is the society needed a "history" and a law code as the old family tribal traditions had been disrupted during the long deportations and traditional family break-ups. The motivation was really legal and political ... not religious. The story presented in the Torah of Moses is the story of squabbling priests who hated the other kingdom's and their traditions ... the Northern vs Southern Kingdoms.