Literal belief in the flood story

[orangebox21]

Humanicide.

No, he killed all the animals too.

Sorry for the confusion let me clarify. Humanicide was more of a question than a statement in response to:

I consider near omnicide far more wicked than anything we humans could have been doing.

If humans were eliminating humans (humanicide) for no other reason than their own pleasure, this would certainly qualify as worse than omnicide as you have defined it. On one hand you have punishing people for their wickedness, on the other hand you have people killing people for fun.

If you have an omniscient, omnipotent god, then there's never any reason for him to do anything other than the optimal solution to a problem.

How do you know that His actions in this case were not the optimal solution to the problem?

The "murder everybody" solution is just your god trying to dig himself out of a hole, in yet another act of his comedy of errors, but never forget that at any time he had the option to resolve his problems without killing anyone.

Again with the murder equivocation. What options do you have in mind?

Additionally, I'm not even in favor of the death penalty; do I really need to tell you that I believe life has inherent worth and should not be snuffed out, least of all if it doesn't even solve any of the problems it was done to solve?

While I'm not adamant one way or another I tend to also not be in favor of the death penalty. Perhaps for different reasons. Men are fallible and the death penalty is final. By nature fallible men cannot serve perfect justice. I think where you are running into trouble is that your viewing God like you view people. His ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts.

If God exists, and He is all knowing and all powerful there would be no logical reason to believe that any of His actions were anything other than optimal. They would be perfectly 'thought out' and perfectly 'carried out.'

If he didn't need to murder them, and so far your argument seems to be that he didn't, then he wasn't justified in doing so. If there was any other option, and there was, then god selected one of the most cruel, and just went with it.

Again with the 'murder'. If killing someone is a just punishment then it is by definition not murder. In using this term you are using an argument by emotive language.

And that's even with me just accepting out of hand that the bible's claim that everyone was wicked is true, which I don't actually accept; it seems like an ad hoc rationalization to me, even within the context of the biblical narrative.

If you accept the claim that everyone was wicked as you have done above, calling it an ad hoc (a made up statement to justify a claim) is a self-refuting claim. While a statement can be either true or false, it cannot be both at the same time (which is what your statement does).

Certainly, but then we're also presupposing that the only account we have of this god comes from human authors in the thrall of that god:

We'd have to if we presuppose the Biblical God (see more discussion in the 'hidden' response below).

I can assume for the sake of argument that this god exists, but I'm still well aware that in that case the bible is little more than propaganda authored by proxies of the being in question.

Then you have not presupposed the Biblical God but simply God in general terms. The topic here is not one of deist but rather Biblical deism. See more discussion in the 'hidden' response below.

It's still just a set of claims that can be true or false as any other, regardless of whether or not it's discussing a real being.

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To be theological we cannot presuppose the Biblical God and view the Bible as a set of claims that can be true or false. Consider:

Premise 1. 20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.(2 Peter 1:20-21)
Premise 2. 19"God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? (Numbers 23:19)
Premise 3. 18so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, (Hebrews 6:18)
Conclusion: The words of the Bible are true.

Explanation: 2 Peter is saying while men penned the scriptures, the scriptures were not men's words, nor did they come about by the will of man, but they were under the sovereign control of God. This is what theologians call 'God breathed.' It should also be noted that when it says 'no prophecy' this means that 'all' scripture is written by God. Premises 2 and 3 state that God does not lie. So if all the words of the Bible are Gods, and God does not lie then all the words of the Bible are true.

At this point I must interject the circular reasoning argument upon myself to clarify. I agree that if I was using the above argument to prove the truth of the words of the Bible it would bear having to defend against the circular reasoning fallacy. However, if we presuppose the Biblical God (as we have for this conversation), I am under no obligation to prove the Biblical God exists but rather to show the logical consistency that if we presuppose the Biblical God we must also presuppose the Bible is true. The two cannot be divorced.

If the Biblical God is true then the Bible is true (as shown above), if some or all of the Bible is false then we would be making an argument with the premises that God does lie, and God does not lie. We would be introducing premises that would directly contradict one another.. We would be simultaneously assuming 'the Biblical God' and not 'the Biblical God'. Both of these practices violates the law of non-contradiction.

I would agree with your above statement if we hadn't presupposed the Biblical God.

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So presupposing the biblical god does not mean we're presupposing an inherently just one: his actions will determine his just-ness,

Addressed above.

and it's my contention that they don't uphold that claim.

Where do you get your contentions from?

I think it's that sort of inconsistency that points to a human-made document, and the need for believers to carefully interpret it to appear differently.

That's a good point.

Omniscience is a tricky one, though. The Bible doesn't claim that god is omniscient,

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Job 37:16

Do you know the balancings of the clouds,
the wondrous works of him who is perfect in knowledge.

1 John 3:19-20

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.

Psalm 147:5

Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
his understanding has no limit.

Isaiah 55:9

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Job 28:24

For he looks to the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens.

Hebrews 4:13

And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Isaiah 46:9

I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done.

Psalm 139:4

Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.

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and at times it shows that he changes his mind (as he did when he decided to spare Noah).

A difficult understanding. I will defer to someone who knows more than I do: Does God change His mind?

If man is made in god's image, and man is a creature given to experimentation and occasional failure on the way to reaching goals, it doesn't seem so odd to assume that god would be the same.

That is a very logical approach to the subject. There are a few things to consider in your assertion. First, while man was created in God's image, that doesn't mean that man is God. Man being made in God's image does not necessitate that what man does God does or vice versa. We often can only understand God by viewing Him through human understanding which reduces Him to our level so to speak. Secondly, while man was created in God's image, man has fallen from that image and has been cursed. It is quite possible that in our created state we wouldn't make mistakes on our way to understanding.

Yes, or if he can really see into the hearts of men and determine what sort of person they are. But if that was the case, he could have headed off the problem long before it would have necessitated destroying almost all life on the planet. Otherwise we are left to wonder why he let things get to that point before taking action.

Why do you think He waited?

Not to mention those babies in their mothers wombs couldn't possibly be evil <yet>.

Still waiting for proof of that assertion.


Robby Pants

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The code is acting up so I'll respond in a way that hopefully you'll understand what quote I'm responding to.

What I mean by 'consistent with the account in question' is that the account does not contradict the conclusion. Therefore, it is a possibility that is consistent with the account in question.

Actually the Bible does speak of another time in human history in which there were no children: the survivors of the flood, eight adults, no children.

7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. (Genesis 7:7)

and elsewhere:

Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. 1 Peter 3:20.

Note: 8 souls= four men and their four wives. Explicitly no children.


I agree that 'no children' is not the established consistent normal. The flood is also not the established consistent normal.

With respect to your X and Y punishment analogy. I think I understand your argument more clearly in that you find it unfair that a child gets punished for their parents mistakes. This again presumes that 1. there were children at the time of the flood, and 2. they were innocent (and were punished solely for the sins of their parents). These two premises have not been proven to be true.

To respond to the unicorn talk, truly, that was mostly an attempt at humor than a serious claim. As a suggestion, when you add to your argument in post #32 saying that:

Well, I mentioned all the things that God would have had to do to get from a flooded planet to where we are today. Given that we don't see any evidence anymore, that's proof that he magiced all the evidence away!

you open yourself to every conceivable and even non conceivable possibilities because you believe God 'magicked all the evidence away'.

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