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Goodbye Jesus

The bible describes a global flood


Wertbag

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I was talking to a Christian online who said the bible doesn't specify the range of Noah's flood.  It uses terms like "the lands" or "the highest mountain" but it makes more sense to be a local flood.

I believe there has been a big push amongst Catholics especially, to try and make things fit to the scientific view.  They believe in an old earth, in evolution, in the big bang and the idea of a local flood fits this pattern.  However I was fairly sure the bible was clear that the flood was global, so I had a quick look at the text:

Genesis 6:7 "I will wipe from the earth the human race..."

6:12 "for all the people of earth had corrupted..."

6:13 "I'm going to put an end to all people..."

7:4 "I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature"

7:19 "All the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered"

7:23 "Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out... Only Noah was left and those with him in the Ark"

 

When I pointed out that it repeatedly said "Everyone", "All" and "Every", he just said "Oh, its all hyperbole".  I can agree with a single throw away line that hyperbole is likely, but Genesis hammers the point over and over, and as global flood proponents point out, if it was a local flood that Noah was aware of, then he had 120 years to simply relocate.  And if it was local, why bother to save all of the animals? There would have been millions all over the earth that wouldn't have been effected.

If it was only a local event then the size of the boat is excessive, and really god is not required.  Its no longer a miracle, but just a natural event. 

If you are going to change the biblical accounts to avoid miracles, then you are left with a non-interactive god and it throws everything else into doubt.  Did Jesus walk on water or was he just a good swimmer?  Did he turn water to wine, or did he start a bar tab?  Was he crucified or did he have a hangover and said it felt like he had been?  Making science and Christianity match really feels like hammering that square peg into a round hole.

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Dude, seriously, in those days all of humanity lived on a tiny sliver of land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.  So it was a local flood that decimated the entire population of earth.  Come in, bruh; where's your cognitive dissonance?

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13 hours ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

Dude, seriously, in those days all of humanity lived on a tiny sliver of land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.  So it was a local flood that decimated the entire population of earth.  Come in, bruh; where's your cognitive dissonance?

Funny but true. For them, the  entire "Earth" probably wasn't what we call Earth. :) The story is weird anyway. Why a ship? Why not just transport everybody to Heaven for a while? And for that matter why a flood? He is God, why not just remove all life in a blink of an eye? Just doesn't make sense to me on a literal level

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That is actually what I was taught in Sunday school and in 7th grade World History class (private christian school).  Human life and all of civilization began between those two rivers.  The Garden of Eden was there somewhere, too; but nobody could find it because god put an angel with a flaming sword there to guard it.  Back then there weren't any Aborigines, Inuits, Chinamen, or those pesky Irish ☘.  There were only white folks and black folks (because of Cain).  It was explained that the colored races survived the flood because one of Noah's sons was married to a woman of color.  Lousy fundagelical lunatics with their stupid education system.

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The different “understandings” of The Flood (worldwide vs local) by different Christians is one of the things that highlight the paradoxes in Christianity.   The ‘liberal’ Christian understands that if the Bible means exactly what it says (“every living creature” etc) then the Bible becomes literally unbelievable.  So the theology is watered down, ultimately to the point where it becomes almost meaningless: why do we need to be saved from a hell that doesn’t really exist?  The fundamentalist knows this so he holds to the literal meaning, against all evidence and reason.  It’s quite a dilemma.  

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1 hour ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

That is actually what I was taught in Sunday school and in 7th grade World History class (private christian school).  Human life and all of civilization began between those two rivers.  The Garden of Eden was there somewhere, too; but nobody could find it because god put an angel with a flaming sword there to guard it.  Back then there weren't any Aborigines, Inuits, Chinamen, or those pesky Irish ☘.  There were only white folks and black folks (because of Cain).  It was explained that the colored races survived the flood because one of Noah's sons was married to a woman of color.  Lousy fundagelical lunatics with their stupid education system.

So the mark of Cain was black skin?

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It's all a really deep mystery that mere humans cannot fully grasp and it's all pointing forward to Jesus. Isn't that just awesome? Glory! 

 

I have a former buddy for whom that is everyday life. God does things in a very contorted way that is perfectly logical, and gets around the comprehension of those who are not saved. Then I watch him apply the same "logic" to politics and humans social interactions, and it gets almost scary. He thinks like a lunatic and considers it a marvelous display of the wisdom of God. It is sad to watch people spend their shot at life forever caught in a cult.

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@TheRedneckProfessor,

 

This just goes to show you were not a True Christian and were deceived by false teaching.  My private christian school tought us black skin was when Noah cursed Ham.

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6 minutes ago, Myrkhoos said:

So the mark of Cain was black skin?

That is what I was taught.

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1 minute ago, Krowb said:

Noah cursed Ham.

No.  That was metaphorical.  Noah didn't curse Ham, his son.  He cursed the Ham his wife made him for supper because it was too dry.  It was foreshadowing for when The Law prohibited eating pork. 

 

godless heretics...

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36 minutes ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

That is what I was taught.

Pardon me for asking here, but does this sound a little...racist?

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12 minutes ago, Myrkhoos said:

Pardon me for asking here, but does this sound a little...racist?

How so?  

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     The flood was local.  So god had 500 year old Noah build a huge ship in the desert, and have the animals come to him, so that they could float around in the area for an entire year instead of simply having him and the animals take a walk out of the area where they could just go on living their lives.  It's about faith.  Get it?  Faith.  It's always faith.  I'll repeat it again.  Faith.  Noah had to have faith and build a boat.  The animals had to have faith (I guess).  The boat had to have faith.  It's about faith.  Leaving the area also takes faith but not really the same as boat level faith.  Also, god made sure that no one left the area before the flood.  No long distance trips for anyone so they could die.  Probably something to do with faith.  Then god filled up the cup-like valley everyone lived in and they died.  Faith.

 

       mwc

 

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6 hours ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

How so?  

That black skin is the mark of Cain? As in the mark of a sinner? So black people are descendants of a sinner? And white people of the righteous?

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3 hours ago, Myrkhoos said:

That black skin is the mark of Cain? As in the mark of a sinner? So black people are descendants of a sinner? And white people of the righteous?

Yes.  It is racist.  The "mark of Cain" is a fairly common doctrine taught in American churches; and is one of the underlying justifications for white supremacy and militant racism here.  The church I grew up in, though not overtly racist, softened the mark of Cain doctrine by co-opting the Flood narrative as expemplary of god's divine providence, wisdom, and love, in that he assured the survival of the colored (sinful) races through the salvation of Noah's son's wife.

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4 hours ago, TheRedneckProfessor said:

Yes.  It is racist.  The "mark of Cain" is a fairly common doctrine taught in American churches; and is one of the underlying justifications for white supremacy and militant racism here.  The church I grew up in, though not overtly racist, softened the mark of Cain doctrine by co-opting the Flood narrative as expemplary of god's divine providence, wisdom, and love, in that he assured the survival of the colored (sinful) races through the salvation of Noah's son's wife.

I was never taught that. I don't actually know what the Orthodox thought the mark of Cain was though, maybe it was one of those doctrines never really talked about in modern church teaching.

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6 hours ago, Myrkhoos said:

I was never taught that.

Much of what I was taught turned out to be complete horseshit.  I've since realized that life is a saga of continuous education until you've learned enough to know nothing.

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On 1/10/2022 at 4:14 PM, Wertbag said:

However I was fairly sure the bible was clear that the flood was global, so I had a quick look at the text:

Genesis 6:7 "I will wipe from the earth the human race..."

6:12 "for all the people of earth had corrupted..."

6:13 "I'm going to put an end to all people..."

7:4 "I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature"

7:19 "All the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered"

7:23 "Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out... Only Noah was left and those with him in the Ark"

 

When I pointed out that it repeatedly said "Everyone", "All" and "Every", he just said "Oh, its all hyperbole".  I can agree with a single throw away line that hyperbole is likely, but Genesis hammers the point over and over, and as global flood proponents point out, if it was a local flood that Noah was aware of, then he had 120 years to simply relocate.  And if it was local, why bother to save all of the animals? There would have been millions all over the earth that wouldn't have been effected.

If it was only a local event then the size of the boat is excessive, and really god is not required.  Its no longer a miracle, but just a natural event. 

If you are going to change the biblical accounts to avoid miracles, then you are left with a non-interactive god and it throws everything else into doubt.  Did Jesus walk on water or was he just a good swimmer?  Did he turn water to wine, or did he start a bar tab?  Was he crucified or did he have a hangover and said it felt like he had been?  Making science and Christianity match really feels like hammering that square peg into a round hole.

 

Yes, great job! You see the pattern with these people now.

 

You have to pull up the bible verses and see what it's saying. It will lay out its own context. It's quite clear that the idea is just as described. All people less the few saved in the ark were to be wiped out. There's no reason to have saved two of each kind of animal in one version and the other alternate version about the clean and unclean animals. There's two flood stories merged together. Both indicate a worldwide flood. 

 

And they bulldoze their own religion as they come up with these apologetics. The miracles are no longer miracles. John 3:16 makes zero sense against a jesus who never died or resurrected, let alone ascended to heaven. They're firing off shots one after another into their own feet. 

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