Literal belief in the flood story

[Godscreated]

A while back, I got into this argument with someone on RRS. If you believe in a literal account of the flood story, the take home is that God willingly killed children because he wanted to, and there is no other possible conclusion.

So, to start with this, if we assume there exists a god that is powerful enough to create universes out of nothing, then it's certainly plausible that there exists a god who could summon a bunch of water out of nothing, leave it on earth a while, and then magic it all away. It's not that difficult to accept once we've made the initial assumption. That being said, there are a lot of other problems with the flood myth that don't jive with the really real world:

• The mixing of fresh and salt water would have killed countless fish.
  
• Most or all terrestrial plants would have died.
  
• The herbivores wouldn't have had enough to eat when they came off the ark.
  
• The carnivores would have quickly killed all the herbivores when they got off the ark, then starved when there was no food.
  
• Every species on the planet would have had a genetic bottle neck 5,000 years ago.
  

So, if we assume God can magic up universes from nothing, and magic water up out of nothing and magic it away, then presumably he can magic up some solutions to those problems. So he uses magic to keep the fish alive. He uses magic to keep the plants alive or simply respawns a bunch of new ones later; it's all the same. He either magically sustains the carnivores and keeps them from reproducing while herbivore populations increase to where they could sustain the carnivores, or he holds them in suspended animation during this time. He also makes sure that none of the species get wiped out by a single disease until the species can become more genetically diverse.

Again, this isn't hard to accept in terms of feasibility if he's out there creating universes. We can certainly question why he'd go through such a convoluted plot to kill all the wicked people when a bunch of well-aimed lightning strikes would have done the job. We can question why he magiced all the evidence of the flood away and later based admittance criteria for heaven on belief. Still, it doesn't prove that he couldn't have done it.


The problem is: the children. The whole notion is God was mad at the wicked people, so he killed them and their kids to make things right. Now, there's no way that the children who were sufficiently young would have been wicked, so why did he kill them? Given all the hoops he had to jump through that I outline earlier, he could have totally saved them; he saved all the fish and terrestrial plants. Also rock formations. He took the time to save fragile geological rock formations, but not the kids. The take home message here is God wanted to kill the children; he had other options. Literally, according to the apologetics, an infinite number of other options.


Now, I've heard Christians respond that the other kids were going to grow up wicked, so that's why he killed them. Two problems:

1) Couldn't Noah have raised them in a moral manner while God fed them manna from heaven, or something?

2) Doesn't this completely violate the concept of free will? Whoops! There goes most of your contemporary apologetics for the problem of evil and the reason for the flood in the first place!


This myth is stupidly contrived and terrible. When people accept it as true, they make some of the most creepy, and morally bankrupt excuses for God I have ever heard.

I've read most but not all the post and those opposed to the flood are picking little things here and there to make an argument instead of looking at what is given in the story. I do believe in the flood, I believe in the truth of scriptures, if I did not I would have to reject the entire thing, with that said let's look at what's been proposed.
1) You assume God does magic tricks, I guess that's possible if one's mind can't fathom creation or one's mind is so much smaller than God's abilities to do what He has the power to accomplish. There is a huge difference between magic and power, you seem not to be able to see this, so I can see how you have become so confused about the entire story.

2) There was a mixing of salt water and fresh water, it would take a moron to believe different. Here are some facts, many species that live in the water can tolerate or live with no difficulty in brackish waters. So all fish would not have died in the flood. There would have been areas where the water would have contained enough salt to preserve life for those species that needed saltier waters and there would have been areas of totally fresh water for those species that could not tolerate salt, it's is a stratification of different waters that even occurs today. Go to South America where the Amazon River empties into the ocean, there is fresh water many miles out into the ocean. Another fact or two, many fish that live their lives in salt water move up fresh water rivers to spawn each year, eels move up rivers for many miles to spawn, the baby eels live in the freshwater and then move into the salty waters of the ocean to live until it's time for them to spawn. I've caught largemouth bass in Florida in salty waters that you would not want to drink and caught sea trout in waters not nearly as salty as they usually live in. Many of the shell fishes can live in fresh or salt water, all they need to survive is food and shelter from those that would consume them. I hope this shows you that God needed neither your supposed magic or His power to keep the water creatures going on with their lives.

3) Like Orangebox21 said, your OP is presuming the story is true, isn't this correct? You believe all plant life would have been destroyed, I believe most of it was, but not the seeds which would have quickly brought back plant life. The story doesn't say when land first appeared after the flood, but we can assume the waters started to recede soon after the rain stopped. This would expose mountain tops where plant life could begin again, and you should remember that the ark was afloat for a year or more giving plant life time to take hold again. Even after the ark sat down Noah and the animals did not exit for some time. You should also remember, if your going to stay true to the story line, that Noah sent out a dove and it returned with a fig leaf signifying that the world was ready for them. So again God did not need your magic nor need to use His powers to restore a world He had already designed to be able to recover.

4) I think you should be able to see that the plant eaters had plenty to eat, you have to remember that there was a limited number of animals coming of the ark, it's not like they needed millions and millions of acres of food. So once again your magic was not needed nor did God need to invoke His powers to sustain the plant eaters.

5) Bet your thinking that the meat eaters will now produce a problem that will require God's special power, wrong. The amount of dead fish and animals from the flood would have given the meat eaters plenty to survive on until the animals of the ark began to reproducing enough to sustain them. There were many more herbivores than carnivores on the ark and herbivores reproduce at a much greater pace than carnivores and plant life reproduces at a far greater rate than herbivores. So every thing was in balance and ready to move on without your magic or the need for God's great powers and why, because God used those great powers at creation so the creation could sustain itself. God left nothing to chance.

6) Genetics was no problem either for many reasons that I'm not going to get into, why, because we could drag this out on here forever and I'm not going through all that. God created in all the kinds the genetic diversity needed to survive such an event, remember God knew this time was coming. Again no magic nor extra powers needed all was taken care of at creation as far as the plant and animal life was concerned.

7) Now I will address the evidence the flood left, do you really believe a flood of that size would leave behind any evidence, me too. The Bible suggest there was only one land mass at the time of the flood, we now have many. A flood of that size could have easily formed the Grand Canyon and other giant scars on the earth. With the continents moving mountains and great valleys and huge depressions would have been formed giving the flood waters places to reside and thus God's power would not have been needed to get rid of the waters that were always here. Now I will say here that for the continents to move as far as they did God may have used His power to reshape the earth while it was flooded. There are many places where fossils are found just piled upon each other as if a flood had brought then together and deposited them in a mass grave. Even animals that science says lived at different time and different places on the earth. The flood is quite a reasonable explanation for such things.

8) Now to address your main point, the children. First you need to keep in mind God does not necessarily consider the flesh because it became temporary, in other words sin brought death to the flesh.
When God flooded the world it was to cleans the earth, evil had become so bad God saw it necessary to cleans the earth and start things over again and to this day evil has not reached that state, it will though but that's for another day.
When God flooded the world every man, woman and child died, and yes there was those children that were innocent. God knew the condition of man and these innocent children would have become as evil as their parents, evil was so dominant thy would not have escaped it. To prove this point God had Noah building the ark for over one hundred years and no children had escaped the evil during those many years. God leaves no stone unturned. So those children, those innocent children who died in the flood will be in heaven with God instead of like those who grew up and died in the flood as evil people. God had to cleanse the earth and in His grace He saved those innocent ones to live eternally with Him, so God never murdered innocent children, He gave them eternal life. You have to remember God deals in the spirit and spiritual because that is eternal and God is spirit not flesh. So when you or I have our head in the flesh God is dealing with and considering the spiritual.

GC

PS, I may not have time to respond to any comments you have about what I posted but I will read them if you do respond, I just do not have much time to respond at this time, very busy. Also my E key is giving me problems so you may have to read a few E's in.

[pocaracas]

I'm on my phone, so this is going to be short.
GC, number 5, carnivores fed on dead fish and other animals for as long as it's required for the living herbivores to restore their populations, so that they can dispense a few individuals every now and then... did I get it right?
How long would that herbivore repopulation require? A year? Two years? Ten?
How long does a dead animal last until it spoils, or rots? A day? Two days? Isn't that why mankind came up with cooking? Make food last longer...up to a week.

Oh, but magic.ok.

[RobbyPants]

1) You assume God does magic tricks, I guess that's possible if one's mind can't fathom creation or one's mind is so much smaller than God's abilities to do what He has the power to accomplish. There is a huge difference between magic and power, you seem not to be able to see this, so I can see how you have become so confused about the entire story.

Differences in word choices such as "magic", "power", or "pepperoni pizza" are meaningless. Whatever it is that God does, he does something that we cannot. He creates universes from nothing through some process, and apparently creates and destroys water to facilitate a global flood. "Magic" is just a simple word to describe whatever phenomenal cosmic powers the Almighty is wielding. Clearly he's doing something. If not, then this flood was inevitable, and not caused by him.

The main point of my post is God does [something] and the flood happens. God does [something] and the flood ends. God chose not to do [something] to change the children, despite clearly being able to do [something] according to the rest of the Bible. Insert whatever word you feel most appropriately describes the power of the Almighty.

2) There was a mixing of salt water and fresh water, it would take a moron to believe different. Here are some facts, many species that live in the water can tolerate or live with no difficulty in brackish waters. So all fish would not have died in the flood. There would have been areas where the water would have contained enough salt to preserve life for those species that needed saltier waters and there would have been areas of totally fresh water for those species that could not tolerate salt, it's is a stratification of different waters that even occurs today. Go to South America where the Amazon River empties into the ocean, there is fresh water many miles out into the ocean. Another fact or two, many fish that live their lives in salt water move up fresh water rivers to spawn each year, eels move up rivers for many miles to spawn, the baby eels live in the freshwater and then move into the salty waters of the ocean to live until it's time for them to spawn. I've caught largemouth bass in Florida in salty waters that you would not want to drink and caught sea trout in waters not nearly as salty as they usually live in. Many of the shell fishes can live in fresh or salt water, all they need to survive is food and shelter from those that would consume them. I hope this shows you that God needed neither your supposed magic or His power to keep the water creatures going on with their lives.

I doubt this would have played out as you suggest, but I'm willing to simply drop the fish point, as it's not really important to my main point.

3) Like Orangebox21 said, your OP is presuming the story is true, isn't this correct? You believe all plant life would have been destroyed, I believe most of it was, but not the seeds which would have quickly brought back plant life. The story doesn't say when land first appeared after the flood, but we can assume the waters started to recede soon after the rain stopped. This would expose mountain tops where plant life could begin again, and you should remember that the ark was afloat for a year or more giving plant life time to take hold again. Even after the ark sat down Noah and the animals did not exit for some time. You should also remember, if your going to stay true to the story line, that Noah sent out a dove and it returned with a fig leaf signifying that the world was ready for them. So again God did not need your magic nor need to use His powers to restore a world He had already designed to be able to recover.

Actually, they weren't there very long. According to Genesis 8:1-11

• The waters remained for 150 days, and the ark rested on Mt Ararat on the 17th day of the 7th month.
  
• It wasn't until the 10th month that the mountain tops could be seen. So, no plant life at this point.
  
• 40 days later, Noah sends a raven and a dove out to find plants and they finds none. Not even a place to "set its foot".
  
• 7 days later he sends it again, and it finds a branch.
  

So, the literal time line, according to Genesis is that within seven days, the dove goes from not finding a place to set it's foot to finding a tree large enough to sprout a branch. Magic!

4) I think you should be able to see that the plant eaters had plenty to eat, you have to remember that there was a limited number of animals coming of the ark, it's not like they needed millions and millions of acres of food. So once again your magic was not needed nor did God need to invoke His powers to sustain the plant eaters.

No, because there was seriously a seven day period between when the dove couldn't find dry ground and when there were trees. I have no reason to believe that a plant population capable of sustaining plant eaters would be around in that short of a time line... barring magic.

5) Bet your thinking that the meat eaters will now produce a problem that will require God's special power, wrong. The amount of dead fish and animals from the flood would have given the meat eaters plenty to survive on until the animals of the ark began to reproducing enough to sustain them. There were many more herbivores than carnivores on the ark and herbivores reproduce at a much greater pace than carnivores and plant life reproduces at a far greater rate than herbivores. So every thing was in balance and ready to move on without your magic or the need for God's great powers and why, because God used those great powers at creation so the creation could sustain itself. God left nothing to chance.

Yeah... all that dead meat would start rotting... unless God preserved it with magic!

Also, your herbivore carnivore ratio doesn't matter. Entire species would be going extinct. Unless there were something like 60 deer and two wolves, you have a problem. If there are 30 herbivore pairs and one wolf pair, quite a few animals would die before procreating.

6) Genetics was no problem either for many reasons that I'm not going to get into, why, because we could drag this out on here forever and I'm not going through all that. God created in all the kinds the genetic diversity needed to survive such an event, remember God knew this time was coming. Again no magic nor extra powers needed all was taken care of at creation as far as the plant and animal life was concerned.

You aren't getting my point. If you reduce a population down to two members, that species would be incredibly susceptible to disease. Genetic diversity is what keeps the entire population from dying out every time a plague of some sort comes by.

7) Now I will address the evidence the flood left, do you really believe a flood of that size would leave behind any evidence, me too. The Bible suggest there was only one land mass at the time of the flood, we now have many. A flood of that size could have easily formed the Grand Canyon and other giant scars on the earth. With the continents moving mountains and great valleys and huge depressions would have been formed giving the flood waters places to reside and thus God's power would not have been needed to get rid of the waters that were always here. Now I will say here that for the continents to move as far as they did God may have used His power to reshape the earth while it was flooded. There are many places where fossils are found just piled upon each other as if a flood had brought then together and deposited them in a mass grave. Even animals that science says lived at different time and different places on the earth. The flood is quite a reasonable explanation for such things.

Floods don't cause cannons; rivers running continuously for eons do. Floods don't move continents; plate tectonics do over eons. As for "flood fossils", there are many, many other places where there is no such evidence. These explanations are just pseudoscience.

Also, there are plenty of things that wouldn't have survived that flood, such as fragile geological rock structures and those various trees that are more than five thousand years old.

8) Now to address your main point, the children. First you need to keep in mind God does not necessarily consider the flesh because it became temporary, in other words sin brought death to the flesh.
When God flooded the world it was to cleans the earth, evil had become so bad God saw it necessary to cleans the earth and start things over again and to this day evil has not reached that state, it will though but that's for another day.
When God flooded the world every man, woman and child died, and yes there was those children that were innocent. God knew the condition of man and these innocent children would have become as evil as their parents, evil was so dominant thy would not have escaped it. To prove this point God had Noah building the ark for over one hundred years and no children had escaped the evil during those many years. God leaves no stone unturned. So those children, those innocent children who died in the flood will be in heaven with God instead of like those who grew up and died in the flood as evil people. God had to cleanse the earth and in His grace He saved those innocent ones to live eternally with Him, so God never murdered innocent children, He gave them eternal life. You have to remember God deals in the spirit and spiritual because that is eternal and God is spirit not flesh. So when you or I have our head in the flesh God is dealing with and considering the spiritual.

Yeah, but he could have spared the children and had Noah raise them in a moral way. God didn't have to kill children. He had other options. He chose to kill children, pure and simple.

If God deals with the spirit, and that's what really matters, why are we even on earth in the first place? Why aren't we just souls in heaven?

[Chas]

---

A while back, I got into this argument with someone on RRS. If you believe in a literal account of the flood story, the take home is that God willingly killed children because he wanted to, and there is no other possible conclusion.

So, to start with this, if we assume there exists a god that is powerful enough to create universes out of nothing, then it's certainly plausible that there exists a god who could summon a bunch of water out of nothing, leave it on earth a while, and then magic it all away. It's not that difficult to accept once we've made the initial assumption. That being said, there are a lot of other problems with the flood myth that don't jive with the really real world:

• The mixing of fresh and salt water would have killed countless fish.
  
• Most or all terrestrial plants would have died.
  
• The herbivores wouldn't have had enough to eat when they came off the ark.
  
• The carnivores would have quickly killed all the herbivores when they got off the ark, then starved when there was no food.
  
• Every species on the planet would have had a genetic bottle neck 5,000 years ago.
  

So, if we assume God can magic up universes from nothing, and magic water up out of nothing and magic it away, then presumably he can magic up some solutions to those problems. So he uses magic to keep the fish alive. He uses magic to keep the plants alive or simply respawns a bunch of new ones later; it's all the same. He either magically sustains the carnivores and keeps them from reproducing while herbivore populations increase to where they could sustain the carnivores, or he holds them in suspended animation during this time. He also makes sure that none of the species get wiped out by a single disease until the species can become more genetically diverse.

Again, this isn't hard to accept in terms of feasibility if he's out there creating universes. We can certainly question why he'd go through such a convoluted plot to kill all the wicked people when a bunch of well-aimed lightning strikes would have done the job. We can question why he magiced all the evidence of the flood away and later based admittance criteria for heaven on belief. Still, it doesn't prove that he couldn't have done it.


The problem is: the children. The whole notion is God was mad at the wicked people, so he killed them and their kids to make things right. Now, there's no way that the children who were sufficiently young would have been wicked, so why did he kill them? Given all the hoops he had to jump through that I outline earlier, he could have totally saved them; he saved all the fish and terrestrial plants. Also rock formations. He took the time to save fragile geological rock formations, but not the kids. The take home message here is God wanted to kill the children; he had other options. Literally, according to the apologetics, an infinite number of other options.


Now, I've heard Christians respond that the other kids were going to grow up wicked, so that's why he killed them. Two problems:

1) Couldn't Noah have raised them in a moral manner while God fed them manna from heaven, or something?

2) Doesn't this completely violate the concept of free will? Whoops! There goes most of your contemporary apologetics for the problem of evil and the reason for the flood in the first place!


This myth is stupidly contrived and terrible. When people accept it as true, they make some of the most creepy, and morally bankrupt excuses for God I have ever heard.

I've read most but not all the post and those opposed to the flood are picking little things here and there to make an argument instead of looking at what is given in the story. I do believe in the flood, I believe in the truth of scriptures, if I did not I would have to reject the entire thing, with that said let's look at what's been proposed.
1) You assume God does magic tricks, I guess that's possible if one's mind can't fathom creation or one's mind is so much smaller than God's abilities to do what He has the power to accomplish. There is a huge difference between magic and power, you seem not to be able to see this, so I can see how you have become so confused about the entire story.

2) There was a mixing of salt water and fresh water, it would take a moron to believe different. Here are some facts, many species that live in the water can tolerate or live with no difficulty in brackish waters. So all fish would not have died in the flood. There would have been areas where the water would have contained enough salt to preserve life for those species that needed saltier waters and there would have been areas of totally fresh water for those species that could not tolerate salt, it's is a stratification of different waters that even occurs today. Go to South America where the Amazon River empties into the ocean, there is fresh water many miles out into the ocean. Another fact or two, many fish that live their lives in salt water move up fresh water rivers to spawn each year, eels move up rivers for many miles to spawn, the baby eels live in the freshwater and then move into the salty waters of the ocean to live until it's time for them to spawn. I've caught largemouth bass in Florida in salty waters that you would not want to drink and caught sea trout in waters not nearly as salty as they usually live in. Many of the shell fishes can live in fresh or salt water, all they need to survive is food and shelter from those that would consume them. I hope this shows you that God needed neither your supposed magic or His power to keep the water creatures going on with their lives.

3) Like Orangebox21 said, your OP is presuming the story is true, isn't this correct? You believe all plant life would have been destroyed, I believe most of it was, but not the seeds which would have quickly brought back plant life. The story doesn't say when land first appeared after the flood, but we can assume the waters started to recede soon after the rain stopped. This would expose mountain tops where plant life could begin again, and you should remember that the ark was afloat for a year or more giving plant life time to take hold again. Even after the ark sat down Noah and the animals did not exit for some time. You should also remember, if your going to stay true to the story line, that Noah sent out a dove and it returned with a fig leaf signifying that the world was ready for them. So again God did not need your magic nor need to use His powers to restore a world He had already designed to be able to recover.

4) I think you should be able to see that the plant eaters had plenty to eat, you have to remember that there was a limited number of animals coming of the ark, it's not like they needed millions and millions of acres of food. So once again your magic was not needed nor did God need to invoke His powers to sustain the plant eaters.

5) Bet your thinking that the meat eaters will now produce a problem that will require God's special power, wrong. The amount of dead fish and animals from the flood would have given the meat eaters plenty to survive on until the animals of the ark began to reproducing enough to sustain them. There were many more herbivores than carnivores on the ark and herbivores reproduce at a much greater pace than carnivores and plant life reproduces at a far greater rate than herbivores. So every thing was in balance and ready to move on without your magic or the need for God's great powers and why, because God used those great powers at creation so the creation could sustain itself. God left nothing to chance.

6) Genetics was no problem either for many reasons that I'm not going to get into, why, because we could drag this out on here forever and I'm not going through all that. God created in all the kinds the genetic diversity needed to survive such an event, remember God knew this time was coming. Again no magic nor extra powers needed all was taken care of at creation as far as the plant and animal life was concerned.

7) Now I will address the evidence the flood left, do you really believe a flood of that size would leave behind any evidence, me too. The Bible suggest there was only one land mass at the time of the flood, we now have many. A flood of that size could have easily formed the Grand Canyon and other giant scars on the earth. With the continents moving mountains and great valleys and huge depressions would have been formed giving the flood waters places to reside and thus God's power would not have been needed to get rid of the waters that were always here. Now I will say here that for the continents to move as far as they did God may have used His power to reshape the earth while it was flooded. There are many places where fossils are found just piled upon each other as if a flood had brought then together and deposited them in a mass grave. Even animals that science says lived at different time and different places on the earth. The flood is quite a reasonable explanation for such things.

8) Now to address your main point, the children. First you need to keep in mind God does not necessarily consider the flesh because it became temporary, in other words sin brought death to the flesh.
When God flooded the world it was to cleans the earth, evil had become so bad God saw it necessary to cleans the earth and start things over again and to this day evil has not reached that state, it will though but that's for another day.
When God flooded the world every man, woman and child died, and yes there was those children that were innocent. God knew the condition of man and these innocent children would have become as evil as their parents, evil was so dominant thy would not have escaped it. To prove this point God had Noah building the ark for over one hundred years and no children had escaped the evil during those many years. God leaves no stone unturned. So those children, those innocent children who died in the flood will be in heaven with God instead of like those who grew up and died in the flood as evil people. God had to cleanse the earth and in His grace He saved those innocent ones to live eternally with Him, so God never murdered innocent children, He gave them eternal life. You have to remember God deals in the spirit and spiritual because that is eternal and God is spirit not flesh. So when you or I have our head in the flesh God is dealing with and considering the spiritual.

GC

PS, I may not have time to respond to any comments you have about what I posted but I will read them if you do respond, I just do not have much time to respond at this time, very busy. Also my E key is giving me problems so you may have to read a few E's in.

---

Except everything you just said is counter to fact and evidence. So there's that.

[Godscreated]

1) You assume God does magic tricks, I guess that's possible if one's mind can't fathom creation or one's mind is so much smaller than God's abilities to do what He has the power to accomplish. There is a huge difference between magic and power, you seem not to be able to see this, so I can see how you have become so confused about the entire story.

Differences in word choices such as "magic", "power", or "pepperoni pizza" are meaningless. Whatever it is that God does, he does something that we cannot. He creates universes from nothing through some process, and apparently creates and destroys water to facilitate a global flood. "Magic" is just a simple word to describe whatever phenomenal cosmic powers the Almighty is wielding. Clearly he's doing something. If not, then this flood was inevitable, and not caused by him.

Really word choice doesn't matter, magic is not considered to be real, yet you apply it to a situation you are portraying as real, whether you believe it or not.

The main point of my post is God does [something] and the flood happens. God does [something] and the flood ends. God chose not to do [something] to change the children, despite clearly being able to do [something] according to the rest of the Bible. Insert whatever word you feel most appropriately describes the power of the Almighty.

God did cause the rain to begin and the waters below to erupt, it wasn't magic though, it was the same power that He used to create. He chose to have those children to be in heaven rather than an eternal hell, I personally see this as a good thing. I can no more describe what God's power is than you can and like I said to begin with small minds that deny the God of creation haven't a clue.

2)

---

There was a mixing of salt water and fresh water, it would take a moron to believe different. Here are some facts, many species that live in the water can tolerate or live with no difficulty in brackish waters. So all fish would not have died in the flood. There would have been areas where the water would have contained enough salt to preserve life for those species that needed saltier waters and there would have been areas of totally fresh water for those species that could not tolerate salt, it's is a stratification of different waters that even occurs today. Go to South America where the Amazon River empties into the ocean, there is fresh water many miles out into the ocean. Another fact or two, many fish that live their lives in salt water move up fresh water rivers to spawn each year, eels move up rivers for many miles to spawn, the baby eels live in the freshwater and then move into the salty waters of the ocean to live until it's time for them to spawn. I've caught largemouth bass in Florida in salty waters that you would not want to drink and caught sea trout in waters not nearly as salty as they usually live in. Many of the shell fishes can live in fresh or salt water, all they need to survive is food and shelter from those that would consume them. I hope this shows you that God needed neither your supposed magic or His power to keep the water creatures going on with their lives.

---

I doubt this would have played out as you suggest, but I'm willing to simply drop the fish point, as it's not really important to my main point.

Then why did you bring it up in the first place, surely you mentioned it for a purpose.

3) Like Orangebox21 said, your OP is presuming the story is true, isn't this correct? You believe all plant life would have been destroyed, I believe most of it was, but not the seeds which would have quickly brought back plant life. The story doesn't say when land first appeared after the flood, but we can assume the waters started to recede soon after the rain stopped. This would expose mountain tops where plant life could begin again, and you should remember that the ark was afloat for a year or more giving plant life time to take hold again. Even after the ark sat down Noah and the animals did not exit for some time. You should also remember, if your going to stay true to the story line, that Noah sent out a dove and it returned with a fig leaf signifying that the world was ready for them. So again God did not need your magic nor need to use His powers to restore a world He had already designed to be able to recover.

Actually, they weren't there very long. According to Genesis 8:1-11

• The waters remained for 150 days, and the ark rested on Mt Ararat on the 17th day of the 7th month.
  
• It wasn't until the 10th month that the mountain tops could be seen. So, no plant life at this point.

2.5 months for plants to start growing as the mountain tops appeared one by one over that span of time. The mountains were only 22.5 feet under the flood waters, plenty of sunlight can penetrate that distance, but nevertheless there was time for plant life to start.

40 days later, Noah sends a raven and a dove out to find plants and they finds none. Not even a place to "set its foot".

7 days later he sends it again, and it finds a branch.

So, the literal time line, according to Genesis is that within seven days, the dove goes from not finding a place to set it's foot to finding a tree large enough to sprout a branch. Magic!

You should read the scriptures closer, the raven went first and flew here and there till the earth dried up. This is an unspecified amount of time, but by a little math we can see it was around 4 months. Noah was on the ark 1 year and 10 days according to the time given in the scriptures. So from the 7th month till the 2 month of the following year the plants had time to grow and trees sprout leaves soon after they sprout through the earth, no magic just as things were set up.

4) I think you should be able to see that the plant eaters had plenty to eat, you have to remember that there was a limited number of animals coming of the ark, it's not like they needed millions and millions of acres of food. So once again your magic was not needed nor did God need to invoke His powers to sustain the plant eaters.

No, because there was seriously a seven day period between when the dove couldn't find dry ground and when there were trees. I have no reason to believe that a plant population capable of sustaining plant eaters would be around in that short of a time line... barring magic.

The waters had receded before the dove was released, the ground had not dried up enough for the animals to move around but the plants had began to grow. From the time the dove brought back the leaf and Noah left the ark was nearly 2 months, you should study the scriptures instead of picking through the net for random facts, you might find more truth than you think.

5) Bet your thinking that the meat eaters will now produce a problem that will require God's special power, wrong. The amount of dead fish and animals from the flood would have given the meat eaters plenty to survive on until the animals of the ark began to reproducing enough to sustain them. There were many more herbivores than carnivores on the ark and herbivores reproduce at a much greater pace than carnivores and plant life reproduces at a far greater rate than herbivores. So every thing was in balance and ready to move on without your magic or the need for God's great powers and why, because God used those great powers at creation so the creation could sustain itself. God left nothing to chance.

Yeah... all that dead meat would start rotting... unless God preserved it with magic!

No magic or extra powers, the meat had began to rot and most was probably gone, but you do know animals eat rotted meat all the time, they still don't have refrigerators to this day.

Also, your herbivore carnivore ratio doesn't matter. Entire species would be going extinct. Unless there were something like 60 deer and two wolves, you have a problem. If there are 30 herbivore pairs and one wolf pair, quite a few animals would die before procreating.

With the amount of dead animals and fish lying around I doubt the predators would expend energy chasing prey and who knows the extinction of some animals may have been part of God's plan. You must be a city boy so I'll go into more detail here, there would have been plenty of extremely shallow seas and lakes where the carnivores could have fresh meat from the fish in them and plenty of rivers for them to take food from. No magic and no extra powers needed. Like I said the design of prey reproducing much faster than predators and plants out producing
herbivores by a great percentage everything would be in balance.

6) Genetics was no problem either for many reasons that I'm not going to get into, why, because we could drag this out on here forever and I'm not going through all that. God created in all the kinds the genetic diversity needed to survive such an event, remember God knew this time was coming. Again no magic nor extra powers needed all was taken care of at creation as far as the plant and animal life was concerned.

You aren't getting my point. If you reduce a population down to two members, that species would be incredibly susceptible to disease. Genetic diversity is what keeps the entire population from dying out every time a plague of some sort comes by.

What disease, man lived long lives what makes you believe animals would be any different during Noah's day. Like I said God created genetic diversity into the animals and man to survive such an event and continue on into the future. An Omniscient being is not going to miss the finer details.

7)

---

Now I will address the evidence the flood left, do you really believe a flood of that size would leave behind any evidence, me too. The Bible suggest there was only one land mass at the time of the flood, we now have many. A flood of that size could have easily formed the Grand Canyon and other giant scars on the earth. With the continents moving mountains and great valleys and huge depressions would have been formed giving the flood waters places to reside and thus God's power would not have been needed to get rid of the waters that were always here. Now I will say here that for the continents to move as far as they did God may have used His power to reshape the earth while it was flooded. There are many places where fossils are found just piled upon each other as if a flood had brought then together and deposited them in a mass grave. Even animals that science says lived at different time and different places on the earth. The flood is quite a reasonable explanation for such things.

---

Floods don't cause cannons; rivers running continuously for eons do. Floods don't move continents; plate tectonics do over eons. As for "flood fossils", there are many, many other places where there is no such evidence. These explanations are just pseudoscience.

You must have missed the Mt. Saint Helen's destruction, the flood of water from the snow melt ground out a small canyon in less than a day, so why couldn't flood waters running down mountains carve out the great canyons of today, they could have. If the Colorado River carved out the Grand Canyon then where is the great delta it would have created. The Mississippi River has created an enormous delta and the Mississippi would have to be a younger river than the Colorado or there would be a canyon so wide we could only fly across it. So where is the delta that would be made of nearly all sandstone.
How do you know that a flood of such enormity would not help in moving continents? We do not have any way to test that.
As for the fossil evidence, do you believe because you can show that fossils in parts of the world are of animals from one time period, negates the evidence of fossils that are of different animals from different time periods and are massed together just as a flood would leave them. Mt. Saint Helen's eruption has taught us many things, that is for those who look at the evidence with truth in mind.

Also, there are plenty of things that wouldn't have survived that flood, such as fragile geological rock structures and those various trees that are more than five thousand years old.

What makes you think the flood could not have left these fragile rock formations and what evidence do you have that those trees could not have survived the flood, like I said earlier the highest mountains were only 22.5 feet below the water not nearly deep enough to keep out sunlight. Then maybe God did use His powers on a few things, what a great way to disguise a world wide flood.

8)

---

Now to address your main point, the children. First you need to keep in mind God does not necessarily consider the flesh because it became temporary, in other words sin brought death to the flesh.
When God flooded the world it was to cleans the earth, evil had become so bad God saw it necessary to cleans the earth and start things over again and to this day evil has not reached that state, it will though but that's for another day.
When God flooded the world every man, woman and child died, and yes there was those children that were innocent. God knew the condition of man and these innocent children would have become as evil as their parents, evil was so dominant thy would not have escaped it. To prove this point God had Noah building the ark for over one hundred years and no children had escaped the evil during those many years. God leaves no stone unturned. So those children, those innocent children who died in the flood will be in heaven with God instead of like those who grew up and died in the flood as evil people. God had to cleanse the earth and in His grace He saved those innocent ones to live eternally with Him, so God never murdered innocent children, He gave them eternal life. You have to remember God deals in the spirit and spiritual because that is eternal and God is spirit not flesh. So when you or I have our head in the flesh God is dealing with and considering the spiritual.

---

Yeah, but he could have spared the children and had Noah raise them in a moral way. God didn't have to kill children. He had other options. He chose to kill children, pure and simple.

If God deals with the spirit, and that's what really matters, why are we even on earth in the first place? Why aren't we just souls in heaven?
[/quote]

Yeah, God could have done whatever He wanted to, but He didn't. God chose this way and guess what, being God He didn't need your permission nor your fallible thoughts to carry out His plan. God being able to see into the future knew what was best for these children.
We are here to make our choice where we want to spend eternity, with God or separated from Him and through Christ God has given us each a way to choose.

GC

---

---

I've read most but not all the post and those opposed to the flood are picking little things here and there to make an argument instead of looking at what is given in the story. I do believe in the flood, I believe in the truth of scriptures, if I did not I would have to reject the entire thing, with that said let's look at what's been proposed.
1) You assume God does magic tricks, I guess that's possible if one's mind can't fathom creation or one's mind is so much smaller than God's abilities to do what He has the power to accomplish. There is a huge difference between magic and power, you seem not to be able to see this, so I can see how you have become so confused about the entire story.

2) There was a mixing of salt water and fresh water, it would take a moron to believe different. Here are some facts, many species that live in the water can tolerate or live with no difficulty in brackish waters. So all fish would not have died in the flood. There would have been areas where the water would have contained enough salt to preserve life for those species that needed saltier waters and there would have been areas of totally fresh water for those species that could not tolerate salt, it's is a stratification of different waters that even occurs today. Go to South America where the Amazon River empties into the ocean, there is fresh water many miles out into the ocean. Another fact or two, many fish that live their lives in salt water move up fresh water rivers to spawn each year, eels move up rivers for many miles to spawn, the baby eels live in the freshwater and then move into the salty waters of the ocean to live until it's time for them to spawn. I've caught largemouth bass in Florida in salty waters that you would not want to drink and caught sea trout in waters not nearly as salty as they usually live in. Many of the shell fishes can live in fresh or salt water, all they need to survive is food and shelter from those that would consume them. I hope this shows you that God needed neither your supposed magic or His power to keep the water creatures going on with their lives.

3) Like Orangebox21 said, your OP is presuming the story is true, isn't this correct? You believe all plant life would have been destroyed, I believe most of it was, but not the seeds which would have quickly brought back plant life. The story doesn't say when land first appeared after the flood, but we can assume the waters started to recede soon after the rain stopped. This would expose mountain tops where plant life could begin again, and you should remember that the ark was afloat for a year or more giving plant life time to take hold again. Even after the ark sat down Noah and the animals did not exit for some time. You should also remember, if your going to stay true to the story line, that Noah sent out a dove and it returned with a fig leaf signifying that the world was ready for them. So again God did not need your magic nor need to use His powers to restore a world He had already designed to be able to recover.

4) I think you should be able to see that the plant eaters had plenty to eat, you have to remember that there was a limited number of animals coming of the ark, it's not like they needed millions and millions of acres of food. So once again your magic was not needed nor did God need to invoke His powers to sustain the plant eaters.

5) Bet your thinking that the meat eaters will now produce a problem that will require God's special power, wrong. The amount of dead fish and animals from the flood would have given the meat eaters plenty to survive on until the animals of the ark began to reproducing enough to sustain them. There were many more herbivores than carnivores on the ark and herbivores reproduce at a much greater pace than carnivores and plant life reproduces at a far greater rate than herbivores. So every thing was in balance and ready to move on without your magic or the need for God's great powers and why, because God used those great powers at creation so the creation could sustain itself. God left nothing to chance.

6) Genetics was no problem either for many reasons that I'm not going to get into, why, because we could drag this out on here forever and I'm not going through all that. God created in all the kinds the genetic diversity needed to survive such an event, remember God knew this time was coming. Again no magic nor extra powers needed all was taken care of at creation as far as the plant and animal life was concerned.

7) Now I will address the evidence the flood left, do you really believe a flood of that size would leave behind any evidence, me too. The Bible suggest there was only one land mass at the time of the flood, we now have many. A flood of that size could have easily formed the Grand Canyon and other giant scars on the earth. With the continents moving mountains and great valleys and huge depressions would have been formed giving the flood waters places to reside and thus God's power would not have been needed to get rid of the waters that were always here. Now I will say here that for the continents to move as far as they did God may have used His power to reshape the earth while it was flooded. There are many places where fossils are found just piled upon each other as if a flood had brought then together and deposited them in a mass grave. Even animals that science says lived at different time and different places on the earth. The flood is quite a reasonable explanation for such things.

8) Now to address your main point, the children. First you need to keep in mind God does not necessarily consider the flesh because it became temporary, in other words sin brought death to the flesh.
When God flooded the world it was to cleans the earth, evil had become so bad God saw it necessary to cleans the earth and start things over again and to this day evil has not reached that state, it will though but that's for another day.
When God flooded the world every man, woman and child died, and yes there was those children that were innocent. God knew the condition of man and these innocent children would have become as evil as their parents, evil was so dominant thy would not have escaped it. To prove this point God had Noah building the ark for over one hundred years and no children had escaped the evil during those many years. God leaves no stone unturned. So those children, those innocent children who died in the flood will be in heaven with God instead of like those who grew up and died in the flood as evil people. God had to cleanse the earth and in His grace He saved those innocent ones to live eternally with Him, so God never murdered innocent children, He gave them eternal life. You have to remember God deals in the spirit and spiritual because that is eternal and God is spirit not flesh. So when you or I have our head in the flesh God is dealing with and considering the spiritual.

GC

PS, I may not have time to respond to any comments you have about what I posted but I will read them if you do respond, I just do not have much time to respond at this time, very busy. Also my E key is giving me problems so you may have to read a few E's in.

---

Except everything you just said is counter to fact and evidence. So there's that.

Where's your proof, you always make comments with nothing to back them up.

GC

[Bad Wolf]

Oh dear, that is all.

[pocaracas]

I find it cute how they point out the Grand Canyon as the result of flood waters.... but, but... aren't there other places on this earth that would have the same kind of rock but no such canyon was developed there? I'm no geologist, so I don't know enough to answer this, but I'm pretty sure there's someplace that qualifies.

Also, oil.... found beneath such sedimentary rock... how did it get there?

[Confused Ape]

like I said earlier the highest mountains were only 22.5 feet below the water not nearly deep enough to keep out sunlight.

The highest mountains would include Mount Everest

Its peak is 8,848 metres (29,029 ft) above sea level[1

There is a moss that grows at 6,480 metres (21,260 ft) on Mount Everest.[49] It may be the highest altitude plant species.[49]

This moss is 2,368 metres below Mount Everest's peak.

Polylepis

Some species of Polylepis form woodlands growing well above normal tree line within grass and scrub associations at elevations over 5000 m; which makes Polylepis appear to be the highest naturally occurring arborescent angiosperm genus in the world.[2]

Light may be detected as far as 1,000 meters down in the ocean, but there is rarely any significant light beyond 200 meters.

The zone between 200 meters (656 feet) and 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) is usually referred to as the “twilight” zone, but is officially the dysphotic zone. In this zone, the intensity of light rapidly dissipates as depth increases. Such a miniscule amount of light penetrates beyond a depth of 200 meters that photosynthesis is no longer possible.

The aphotic, or “midnight,” zone exists in depths below 1,000 meters (3,280 feet). Sunlight does not penetrate to these depths and the zone is bathed in darkness.

If the flood waters were 22.5 feet above the top of Mount Everest, even the high altitude moss would be in darkness.

I found an interesting article on a Christian website - The Genesis Flood Why the Bible Says It Must be Local

This explanation doesn't make the story true, of course, and it ignores the evidence that humans originated in Africa, not the Middle East. It still makes a lot more sense than the flood waters covering the entire planet including the top of Mount Everest.

[RobbyPants]

God did cause the rain to begin and the waters below to erupt, it wasn't magic though, it was the same power that He used to create. He chose to have those children to be in heaven rather than an eternal hell, I personally see this as a good thing. I can no more describe what God's power is than you can and like I said to begin with small minds that deny the God of creation haven't a clue.

So... the earth wasn't covered in water, then somehow enough water came through "heaven's windows" and "erupted from the earth" to cover it, and... it all went away? Where'd it go? It's either somewhere, or it's gone. Given what we learned about the water cycle as 13-year-olds, that water is either somewhere, or God must have magicked it away.

Which is it?

Then why did you bring it up in the first place, surely you mentioned it for a purpose.

I brought it up because I think it's apt. I was dropping it because I don't feel like debateing water salinity with you on a pseudoscientific level. There's a big difference between a freshwater river dumping water into the ocean and fresh water falling from the sky all over the earth, mixing with the oceans.

At best, you're making stuff up, and I don't feel like arguing hypothetical fish survival with someone who thinks that the flood was scientific.

You should read the scriptures closer, the raven went first and flew here and there till the earth dried up. This is an unspecified amount of time, but by a little math we can see it was around 4 months. Noah was on the ark 1 year and 10 days according to the time given in the scriptures. So from the 7th month till the 2 month of the following year the plants had time to grow and trees sprout leaves soon after they sprout through the earth, no magic just as things were set up.

Perhaps you should read it closer. You're making an assumption. There is no mention that Noah waited to send the dove. The wording implies they were sent at the same time, but for a different purpose.

Genesis 8:6-9

---

6 And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made:

7 And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.

8 Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground;

9 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.

---

The wording looks like he did those both at the end of the 40 days. I suppose it's possible he waited an indeterminate amount of time. I mean, it's not like the Bible is known for being worded very well, but given the very specific time line of four or five events just in that chapter alone, it seems odd that they would just leave that part out. Going based on the precedence of the rest of Genesis 8 (Event 1 happened after X days, event 2 happened after Y days, etc...), I think it's fair to assume they were simultaneous.

Even still, even if they were sent separately, the dove found no where to land at that point. Then, somehow, it found a tree with leaves seven days later.

Genesis 8:10-11

---

10 And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark;

11 And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.

---

So, there you have it: conditions went from the dove finding "no rest for the sole of her foot" to her finding an olive leave seven days later.

The waters had receded before the dove was released, the ground had not dried up enough for the animals to move around but the plants had began to grow. From the time the dove brought back the leaf and Noah left the ark was nearly 2 months, you should study the scriptures instead of picking through the net for random facts, you might find more truth than you think.

Olive trees grow under water?

Why would I read a book of Hebrew mythology to find out facts? You should study observable reality instead of cherry picking "facts" to support your view of one particular culture's mythology. You might find more truth than you think.

No magic or extra powers, the meat had began to rot and most was probably gone, but you do know animals eat rotted meat all the time, they still don't have refrigerators to this day.

Okay, lets go back to the time line...

40 days of rain + 150 days of floating around + 40 days of waiting on the mountain + 7 days of waiting for an olive leaf = 237 days. That's almost eight months.

Are you seriously telling me that modern animals eat carrion that is eight months old? It would have long-since rotted. You should think your apologetics out a little better before presenting them.

With the amount of dead animals and fish lying around I doubt the predators would expend energy chasing prey and who knows the extinction of some animals may have been part of God's plan. You must be a city boy so I'll go into more detail here, there would have been plenty of extremely shallow seas and lakes where the carnivores could have fresh meat from the fish in them and plenty of rivers for them to take food from. No magic and no extra powers needed. Like I said the design of prey reproducing much faster than predators and plants out producing
herbivores by a great percentage everything would be in balance.

Even if the carrion still existed (magic!), then the two deer would be procreating and the two wolves would be procreating, and... your ratios are still off. Noah would have needed something like sixty deer, which he didn't have. That, or you'd have to assert that the deer are reproducing at a much faster rate than normal. Magic?

What disease, man lived long lives what makes you believe animals would be any different during Noah's day. Like I said God created genetic diversity into the animals and man to survive such an event and continue on into the future. An Omniscient being is not going to miss the finer details.

I don't think you're grasping that when a species has little genetic divertisity, how susecptible to diesease it is. If every species was cut down to two or seven members, they would be horribly vulnerable. Here, educate yourself. Without genetic diversity, the species risks extinction.

Now, assuming you don't believe in evolution, here are commercial farmers talking about the same thing, because it's demonstrably true.

Now, it's possible all of those species survived this fragile time period. Especially if God protected them (with magic!).

How do you know that a flood of such enormity would not help in moving continents? We do not have any way to test that.

How do you know it would? Sounds like you're making things up.

What makes you think the flood could not have left these fragile rock formations and what evidence do you have that those trees could not have survived the flood, like I said earlier the highest mountains were only 22.5 feet below the water not nearly deep enough to keep out sunlight. Then maybe God did use His powers on a few things, what a great way to disguise a world wide flood.

So wait... the flood's power created cannons and moved continents, and it... preserved fragile rock structures?

Huh.

Yeah, God could have done whatever He wanted to, but He didn't. God chose this way and guess what, being God He didn't need your permission nor your fallible thoughts to carry out His plan. God being able to see into the future knew what was best for these children.

Well, that's my point. Have fun worshiping your willful child-murdering monster-god.

We are here to make our choice where we want to spend eternity, with God or separated from Him and through Christ God has given us each a way to choose.

Too bad he sets the bar at belief and then goes into hiding and removes all evidence that he exists!



TL;DR: You're using make-believe pseudoscience to prove that the flood was scientific (for reasons that are beyond me, given that you undoubtedly believe that God used magic to create Adam from dust) and you're creepily okay with God killing children.

[Godscreated]

like I said earlier the highest mountains were only 22.5 feet below the water not nearly deep enough to keep out sunlight.

The highest mountains would include Mount Everest

Its peak is 8,848 metres (29,029 ft) above sea level[1

There is a moss that grows at 6,480 metres (21,260 ft) on Mount Everest.[49] It may be the highest altitude plant species.[49]

This moss is 2,368 metres below Mount Everest's peak.

Polylepis

Some species of Polylepis form woodlands growing well above normal tree line within grass and scrub associations at elevations over 5000 m; which makes Polylepis appear to be the highest naturally occurring arborescent angiosperm genus in the world.[2]

Light may be detected as far as 1,000 meters down in the ocean, but there is rarely any significant light beyond 200 meters.

The zone between 200 meters (656 feet) and 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) is usually referred to as the “twilight” zone, but is officially the dysphotic zone. In this zone, the intensity of light rapidly dissipates as depth increases. Such a miniscule amount of light penetrates beyond a depth of 200 meters that photosynthesis is no longer possible.

The aphotic, or “midnight,” zone exists in depths below 1,000 meters (3,280 feet). Sunlight does not penetrate to these depths and the zone is bathed in darkness.

If the flood waters were 22.5 feet above the top of Mount Everest, even the high altitude moss would be in darkness.

I found an interesting article on a Christian website - The Genesis Flood Why the Bible Says It Must be Local

This explanation doesn't make the story true, of course, and it ignores the evidence that humans originated in Africa, not the Middle East. It still makes a lot more sense than the flood waters covering the entire planet including the top of Mount Everest.

Exactly why did Everest need to be that high at that time.