Atheist Bible Study 1: Genesis

[Drich]

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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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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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.

  empty conjecture and proofless speculation..

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your hypostasis doesn't even make sense time line wise. the jew were jews in captivity/before the exodus, so then why would they all of a sudden need these stories after the exodus when the served the people better and before keeping them from being completely assimilated into the egyptian culture.