Literal belief in the flood story

[orangebox21]

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God, who repeatedly instructed humans to kill other humans "for fun"

Where does it say "for fun"?

suddenly decided killing EVERY ANIMAL, PLANT, and HUMAN BEING, INCLUDING BABIES, CHILDREN AND PREGNANT WOMAN ON EARTH was morally superior to just wiping out the "evil people"?

Given that the scripture says mankind was exceedingly wicked, two questions. How do you know there were babies, children, and pregnant woman on earth at the time of the flood? If there were babies, children, and pregnant women on earth at the time of the flood, do you have a reason why the word 'mankind' would exclude these groups (thus absolving them of being exceedingly wicked)?

Scripture teaches that condemnation is based on the clear rejection of God's revelation--whether general or specific--not simple ignorance of it (Luke 10:16; John 12:48; 1 Thess. 4:8).
2 Samuel 12:23, Romans 1:18–20 ,

Furthermore, belief is a necessary requirement for salvation John 3:18–19

Where does belief come from, is it from the will of man or the will of God?

Can we definitely say that the unborn and young children have comprehended the truth displayed by God? No? Then that renders them with excuse.

The answer to this question is found in the answer to the question I have proposed above.

Or are you one of those mental abusers that would make a mother think her baby died and went to hell?

That feels a bit like a loaded question.

To clarify my initial response, I was asking for proof of the assertion that there were babies at the time of the flood.

But one of the reasons you posted for why god needed to kill everything was to assuage god's wrath, so apparently he was doing it to appease his own emotions anyway.

Why do you assume wrath is an emotion? If a person commits a crime and a judge gives a punishment you certainly wouldn't consider the judge or the punishment to have anything to do with emotion.

More importantly, this doesn't address the issue: A, the answer to a crime is rarely more of the same crime, regardless of the motivations behind it,

Rather than assuming I'll ask, so if a judge hands out a death penalty sentence, do you consider the judge and/or executioner guilty of murder?

and B, since when does "punishing people for their wickedness" involve sweeping every other sentient being in the world, including those humans who hadn't killed anyone? How is that just, to punish entities who merely inhabit the same space as criminals for crimes they didn't engage in, nor had the ability to prevent?

A misrepresentation of the account/argument. The account leaves no room for the innocent. It states all mankind was exceedingly wicked.

Because an omniscient and omnipotent being, by definition, can accomplish what he needs to without killing anything. Hell, he could have just wished the wickedness out of everyone, since he clearly wasn't concerned with free will at the point that he was going to terminally rob everyone of theirs.

Perhaps we need to define omnipotent. When we say that God is all powerful we mean He can do anything consistent with His character and nature. Certainly we wouldn't say He could make Himself not exist, or could create a rock heavier than He could lift. Even the Bible qualifies God's omnipotence when it says He cannot lie, or cannot deny Himself. I bring this up because your solution to the problem here creates injustice. If people are doing wrong and are not held accountable then injustice is done. This would mean that God is unjust. This would be contrary to His character and nature.

Equivocation? What else would you call the unnecessary, unwarranted taking of life through violence?

You must continue to misrepresent the reasons for the flood in order to call it 'murder' and 'unnecessary, unwarranted taking of life through violence.'

Sorry, no double standards here: god doesn't get a free pass to behave worse than you'd expect people to, and no amount of "mysterious ways" handwaving is going to change that. This is just an argument from ignorance you're using here.

Quite the contrary, the argument from ignorance is: (I don't understand why) God kills people as a means of justice when there are other hypothetical options available therefore it's murder.

I'm not arguing that I would justify God's actions because I don't understand them, in that I can't know or understand His thoughts (an argument from ignorance), rather it is because God's knowledge is complete (far above our comprehension) He can make perfect judgments.

Even when they're demonstrably not?

Again on what logical and/or moral standard are you showing God's actions are 'demonstrably not'?

Do you seriously not understand that I don't find god's actions just, and that I don't find your baseless presupposition that they are just a compelling argument?

I do understand that you don't find God's actions just.

Sorry, that was poor sentence structure on my part. I personally believe the claim of wickedness to be ad hoc, but I'm saying that even if I didn't and took it one hundred percent seriously, god's actions still wouldn't be justified.

Got it. Is that because you don't believe in the death penalty in any circumstance? Or some other reason?

I'm willing to presuppose the existence of a god, even one that caused the christian bible to be written as an accurate account of his actions; however, claims about his attributes would still be internally inconsistent within that framework based upon his actions. If I'm presupposing the god as depicted in the bible is real, then I cannot logically reconcile his claim of being just with the actions he's performed. If some of those actions, the flood among them, are true, then he cannot be a just god. If those actions are untruthful, then he cannot be an infallible or honest god. Either way, the bible is out of whack with its description of the creator.

I'll make presuppositions if you want, but only up until the point where they stop making sense. At that point, I've gotta start untangling some of this stuff.

I understand what your saying and it makes sense in that there's only so much you're willing to presuppose. So your thought process (and I'm being very presumptuous) goes something like: ok we'll presuppose the Biblical God, the Bible says He's like this and that, and He's acts like this and that, wait those things aren't consistent, therefore the Bible isn't true and the Biblical God doesn't exist.

I can understand how you can come to that conclusion. That thought process does inadvertently retroactively cancel out the presupposition of the Biblical God's existence. It makes it near impossible to remain consistent within a "presuppositional" argument because eventually you will default back to 'there is no Biblical God' and at that point the argument becomes logically inconsistent.

As I've explained above, those two presuppositions, of the existence of god and the accuracy of the bible, also violate the law of non contradiction. For the purposes of this argument we kind of need the flood story to be truthful, and henceforth the claims of god's attributes must be, in my position, false in order for that to be so.

This statement exemplifies the above explanation. You begin your assertion by presupposing the Biblical God and the flood and end your statement by denying the Biblical God. We can't draw logical conclusions from this kind of inconsistency.

My brain meats?

So.... because your brain says so?

Here: Premise one: a A god exists that has the power to resolve the wickedness issue without killing anyone. Premise two: Despite this, that god opted to kill everyone, even those that had nothing to do with the proposed problem. Premise three: Killing the innocent is morally wrong. Conclusion: God did not perform the morally or logically optimal set of actions when he flooded the world.

Fair enough. Prove that your premises are consistent with the Biblical God.

It's a simple biological fact that self awareness doesn't appear in children until at least fifteen months or so after birth. Things that aren't self aware cannot be moral actors, as there isn't a person in there to act. Therefore, any child younger than a certain age at the time of the biblical flood was a murdered innocent.

You had written this earlier and I had asked for some references but I'm assuming you didn't see the post. In any case I've had some time to reflect on your assertion that people don't become self-aware until at least 15 months. Consider that children as young as 6 months old can be taught sign language to communicate with their parents. This means that they are self-aware of their own hunger and can communicate their need to a parent prior to being physically able to speak.

That leaves us in the position of having to blindly determine which of god's qualities are reflected by man, and to what degree. We can pick and choose those which are convenient to our argument, one way or another. And if you run into any inconsistencies you can fall back on the lack of understanding, or on man's imperfect nature. Now god's actions become inscrutable and can be used to justify pretty much anything. That is one of those areas that was a problem for me as a believer.

I can see that being a problematic question. To clarify a bit. The qualities themselves were not affected by the fall but rather our ability to utilize them. For example, rationale and logic are a trait of the image of God that we were made in, but because of the fall we don't always, and I would argue we don't naturally, think logically or rationally. I'm not proposing this as an answer to your problem, just trying to define terms so to speak.

Some would say because God says so and I trust in His word is a sufficient response. Others would say this is a superficial and circular reasoned response. I do think there are some compelling answers to some of the tough 'moral questions' of Biblical history that offer a deeper explanation than because the Bible says so. To address them one would have to go through them individually.

Regardless there are only two ways to make judgments about these moral issues. We either use the Bible as the authority or we use man(ourselves) as the authority (there could be a third possibility, any suggestions welcome)

Forgive the snark, but I think it's because he is a fictional character in a story that needed for him to wait to set up the action.

Snark forgiven. While I disagree with the assertion it is at least consistent with your position as an atheist.

The JWs teach that Satan turned Adam and Eve against god to prove that humanity did not need god to guide them, and that god therefore allowed a period of time for humanity to prove Satan's point.

Are they teaching that this period of time would be from creation until the flood?

When we consider the rank unfairness of the way god rigged the game (by cursing humans with imperfection and a world that suddenly turned against them), it makes the flood narrative completely illogical.

So do JW's teach that the curse God placed upon mankind and the earth was not a consequence to their sin but rather an unwarranted change in the created order?

If humanity had --within a few hundred or a few thousand years,-- gone almost completely bad, then god's point was proven. Man in his fallen condition without god was doomed. Why draw out the drama for another few thousand years, knowing that the end result would be no different?

Are you still talking about the period of time between creation and the flood here?

If I'm remembering correctly you have on at least a few occasions quoted JW theology. Is that the association you were involved with when you considered yourself a Christian?

You're bringing up the circumstances after the flood to explain how there might not have been children before the flood? You're saying that after everyone drown except eight adults, that there were no children, so there might not have been children before? You're violating causality. Do you see the problem with this?

Prove there were children at the time of the flood.

The point is: the Bible never establishes no children as "normal". The only two times you will find are:
1) Creation, and 
2) After the story in question.
You will not find anything else. There is no compelling reason to assume this is the case.

I've already stated that I agree with you that the Bible does not establish 'no children as normal'.  

It doesn't matter if the flood was normal. You've admitted that it is normal to consider children existing in human civilizations. Just because the Bible didn't explicitly state there were children doesn't mean it's reasonable to assume that maybe they weren't there.

I'll try to clarify one more time:  I'm not arguing that because the Bible didn't specifically say there are children that there were none.  I am stating that among the survivors there were no children so that leaves open the possibility that there were no children at the time of the flood.  And again, the burden of proof is not on me to prove that there were no children, but rather on you to prove that there were.  

Your argument is:  Because I(you) have always observed that the earth's population includes children therefore there were children at the time of the flood.

That is a faith based statement.  It's not proof, it's an assumption.  Furthermore remaining consistent in your thinking:  I have always observed that the earth has never undergone a worldwide flood that wiped humanity off the face of the earth with the exception of 8 people therefore the flood never occurred. 

You grant an 'exception to the rule' in one case but not another.

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