Literal belief in the flood story

[Tonus]

You mean I'm... *dramatic pause* ...MISINTERPRETING it?

Maybe so, maybe not, I'm not sure I fully understand your position yet so as to make an accurate judgement. Let me rephrase, the text says that God was going to wipe mankind from the face of the earth because they had become exceedingly wicked. Nowhere in that text does the word 'solution' occur. In order to maintain logical consistency you would have to insert the word 'solution' into the text to conclude that God did what He did as a solution to the wickedness problem. Why have you choosen to do this?

God identified a problem and proposed an action to deal with it. This is what people typically refer to as a solution. Unless you reject the notion that mankind becoming exceedingly wicked was a problem because the text never uses the word "problem."

You will note that god's initial intent was to destroy all of humanity because it had become so wicked.

True. But that doesn't necessarily mean He did it to rid the world of evil versus because the world was evil.

I get the impression that you are splitting hairs, since both of those can apply. God decided to wipe out mankind because it had become too wicked. This, therefore, was his solution to the problem.

God changed his mind because a single man turned out to find favor in his eyes.

Did Noah find favor with God before or after He decided to send the flood?

Hard to say, the text does not include the word "before" or "after." I would assume that it was after, since it seems god came to his decision to wipe out humanity, then recognized Noah as deserving of an exception.

Heck, if he'd only saved Noah he still might have rid the world of wickedness.

Not consistent Biblically. For it is written, "there is no one righteous no not one." This position if further supported by Noah getting drunk after the flood.

I was being facetious; if Noah was the only human saved from the flood, there would not have been a human race once he passed on, and therefore the problem of human wickedness would have been resolved.

Unless he was to poof up another wife for him. That seems to be the flaw in god's design of man: as soon as a second human enters the picture it all goes to hell.

Why would you presume it was Eve's fault that Adam sinned? The Bible teaches that sin entered into the world through Adam.

I'm only presuming that adding a second human to the mix would lead to trouble, seeing as that's how it worked out the first time. It may be more accurate to have said that things would have gone badly if god was to poof up another talking snake or tree of knowledge of good and evil. The story of Adam and Eve offers any number of ways to assign blame. We can blame Eve, Adam, the serpent, and/or god depending on how it is approached.