Literal belief in the flood story

[RobbyPants]

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You are entirely correct. It is possible that God could have "magically" prevented babies from being there. Granted, there is no mention of this, but it is possible. Now, one has to wonder how God kept the world baby-free before his judgment:
He rendered everyone sterile: It's possible, I suppose, but there's no evidence this happened. It also seems ridiculous, given

• He had Noah make a boat,
  
• Guided animals toward the boat,
  
• Magically made people sterile,
  
• Magically sustained and repopulated the planet after the flood...
  

...all so he could drown some people he was mad at. If he had the ability to precision-strike their testicles and ovaries, he could have just given them all heart attacks. The best case for this solution is "God is super inefficient and contrived". Pretty much like any bit of bronze-age mythology.
God removed their desire to have kids: Kills the free will defense, much like when he hardened Pharaoh's heart.

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So can we agree that your initial claim led to an either-or fallacy?

So, your magical third option is just that: God magically, somehow, maybe made it so there was no babies so when he killed everyone he didn't kill babies, because thinking about God killing babies makes you uncomfortable, despite there being no other reason to believe this was the case? Can we agree on that?

I mean, yeah, sure. I'll grant you your third option so long as you admit that there isn't any evidence it's actually the case, and that you're just throwing it out as a hypothetical to counter my complaint that God didn't save the babies because there were none to save.

On one side of the coin if you read the judgments in the OT you'll notice that God often waits until the "fullness of sin" or for "sin to be complete." In other words He waits for the crimes to be great enough to warrant the punishment. On the other side of the coin it is written, "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." God is patient, not wanting any to perish. Noah was a preacher of righteousness for about 100 years as he called people to righteousness and told them how to escape the coming judgment. Mankind was forewarned then as they are now. No one listened then, who will listen today?

So he lets a known and preventable problem fester until it cannot be easily fixed? Holy crap! This does support my "YHWH is inefficient and contrived, like other bronze-age mythology" stance. A stitch in time saves nine, YHWH.

I've never understood the 'blame God for my/peoples actions' argument.

I've never understood this "God kills children for their parent's mistakes" argument.

Also, whatever "warning" God was doing, was clearly ineffective, an as a future-telling god, he would have known it was ineffective. This makes it appear like he drown a bunch of people because he wanted to drown a bunch of people, and not because he was trying to fix any type of problem.

It was entirely effective. It was proof that everyone rejected Him and His salvation. You're defining it "ineffective" because more people didn't come to repentence and thus salvation. Your hidden assumption is that it's God's fault that people don't repent. Why not you, why not now, repent and believe the gospel?

So... God didn't care if the people repented? The purpose of the warning wasn't to get them to be good?

God has a very weird way of communicating his intents and doling out justice. He seems more concerned with killing people he doesn't like than raising good people. This would be like the difference between me explaining to my girls why they should behave in a certain manner and leading by example, as opposed to making vague and distant threats and beating them when they didn't listen. One could almost conclude I was beating them solely because I wanted to, and that I wasn't actually interested in their moral or physical well being...

No. You asserted there were no children. You're going to have to prove it.

Again, to show an argument contains the "either-or" fallacy it has to be shown that the arguer has forced the arguee to choose between only two choices when more than two choices are possible. I have shown that there are more than two possible choices. I do not have to prove any of the other choices are true, only that they are possible in order to show that your argument contains the "either-or" fallacy.

Given that in any time we have been able to observe it, there have always been children living with the adults, I think it's reasonable to assume that is the default case.

I agree with you. I also agree that this is an assumption, a reasonable one yes, but an assumption nonetheless. We have to be carefull when logically concluding that because things are like X today that proves they were like X thousands of years ago. It's not a provable nor logically inferrable statement, it's just assumed.

Sure. But it's not like you're setting up a good argument, or anything. It's akin to saying "just because the sun rises in the east because of the direction of the Earth's rotation doesn't mean it was like that 5,000 years ago.". That's technically just as true, but without a compelling reason to think that, I'm not going to believe it was the case.

(which was, per the story, not indicative of the rest of the population!)

Where do you get your Biblical support for this statement?

Noah and his family was righteous and everyone else wasn't. I thought that was pretty well understood. He's obviously "not like them", so I don't know why you would think you can assume Noah's family structure was in any way indicative of everyone else's family structures.