There must be a reason for that but it is good of you to oblige her.

If Noah's flood is a myth then it lets God off of the hook for the Tsusnami and Haiti.  If Noah's flood is not a myth then God was punishing people through the Tsusnami and Haiti.  This would fit with the theology of the Old Testament God.

We have no evidence that Noah's flood did or did not happen.  We also have a better understanding of weather patterns in modern society.  It is possible that Noah's flood did happen and it was attributed to God in hindsight because of no available scientific explanation.  Primitive people struggled to find meaning in the hardship because sometimes it is easier to go through a hard time when there is a purpose.   So in order to get through the hard time (flood, loss of family, loss of friends, loss of a way of life) they gave it a meaning on their own so they could get on with life.

It's another OT story.  I'm not sure what "truth" is revealed by mass murder.

There is no evidence of a mass flood around 6000 years ago.  None.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090206-smaller-noah-floo...

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

http://www.epicidiot.com/evo_cre/noahs_flood.htm

http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2007/09/noahs-flood-is-fairy-tale-part-1.html

http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2007/09/noahs-flood-is-fairy-tale-part-2.html

What do you mean "another Old Testament story to relate a truth"?

I believe Noah's flood (really God's flood since He sent it) was an actual historical event.

I think the truth revealed is that God left us with a promise - a rainbow to remind us that out of every disaster that we face, there is hope for a better tomorrow.If  the story is looked at this way, it is a story of new life.

Froggie, I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

The Grand Canyon - Amazing Proof of Noah's Flood

When we talk of "The Story of Noah's Flood", were are talking about "reality", not about "science fiction", or about "fantasy" as is actually the case with "The Story of Evolution".  I know that people like to tell their children about "The Story of Noah's Flood".  Nevertheless, there are some problems with treating this historical flood as just some kind of light-hearted "Children's Story":

(1) The Flood of Noah's Day was the greatest disaster in the history of the world.  This flood was a far greater disaster than the sinking of The Titanic, or any of the other disasters of the past.  In fact, only eight people in the entire world lived through this tremendously tragic worldwide disaster.  All of the other millions of people, (if not billions of people), living on the Earth in that day, drowned during this great flood.  Therefore, in what way is this story of mass death a "Children's Story" to be so glibly told to young children?

(2) Noah was a righteous man.  Nevertheless, the flood was a judgment sent by God upon a world that had become filled with wicked, violent unbelievers.  These evil men and women committed so much violence and sin on the Earth that God was left with no other choice but to judge the Earth with a great flood.

(3) This is not a "story" like "Goldilocks" or "The Three Little Pigs".  No, this Flood actually happened, with an incredible amount of physical evidence which can still be seen throughout the world today, showing that it did indeed happen.  This scientific evidence is also well documented.  The huge weight of scientific evidence just cannot be simply ignored, as if this were just some kind of "Children's Story".

This is just one of many sights with evidence of the flood taking place --We are all being tested. Question is who do we believe ?????

It is up to the individual to choose to either believe what the world says using our 5 senses or believe in what God's Book says rely on faith and trust. We will always find pros and cons.

  Blessings      

That's great.  You might as well try to defend the idea that 2+2=5, but I applaud your courage in the face of overwhelming evidence against your position.

unsafe, the Grand Canyon is evidence of 5 or 6 million years of the Colorado River flowing, not a 40 day flood a few thousand years ago.

I watched a program that goes into detail about the source of the Noah's flood myth. An archaeology team goes to the black sea and finds evidence that it was once a freshwater lake which was flooded by sea water at around 5600 BC, in the Mesolithic. It's not the whole world, but it seemed so to the inhabitants at the time, as their whole sulture lived around the lake. This story became Sumerian legend in which Utnapishtim built a boat to save humanity and the livestock, which was passed on to the early Judaic people who said Noah built said boat. Everything has a basis in reality. I feel that this mystery has been solved.

Now, there is also a flood story from south America, but that seems to be a separate flood, and I haven't got any evidence for it yet...

Ah, there is also a flood story from the eruption of the volcano on the island of Thera about 1500 BC, which destroyed the Minoan culture and created ripples of legend forwards into time, which may account for the Atlantis legend.

  Thanks chansen for the info

  But that's just your opinion and your entitled to it ---sorry but you or I weren't there when or when not the flood happened, we can only either believe or not .

  Many Blessings and have a great day 

Wikkipedia's deluge page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_(prehistoric) My quotes are from there.

This says the black sea also flooded before that in 14,000 BC. because of global warming following the last glacial maximum.

There was also a flooding of the Persian gulf around 10,000 BC, because of melting glaciers.

"There is a theory that there was also a Black-Sea-type sill collapse at the Strait of Hormuz at the outlet of the Persian Gulf, "

Now that seems a likely candidate for the Sumerian flood myth.

"We can thus postulate that the pre-Sumerian cultures had more than ample time to be born and flourish in a riverine setting, encouraged by the agricultural potential and the blessings of a temperate climate. The fact that the body of proof for the existence of these societies must now lie at the bottom of the Persian Gulf furnishes at least a temporary excuse for the archaeologist's failure to produce evidence for their material culture."

There's lots more on the Wikki page. It also goes into American glacial floods.

Unsafe, Ah but we can research.

unsafe, we are each entitled to our own opinions.  We are not, as the saying goes, entitled to our own facts.  The facts do not support anything close to a global flood.  Period.  There would be ample evidence of such a flood.  There is none.

   chansen

   There are facts for-- aganist the food and for the flood 

by Michael Oard
Seattle Creation Conference, July 2004

Believe or not ???????????? our choice believe us humans or God?

Blessings

NOthing in Genesis 1-11 (and possibly not much in the rest of the book) is history IMO.

But it can not be denied that flood stories are common in much mythology (Greek myth has an almost exact parallell to the Noah story). 

I agree with ElanorGold's theory.  Stories of widespread floods could have originated at the time the glaciers were melting which would have flooded the areas not covered by ice.

In the recent past some stone structures were discovered off the northwest coast of India and this apparently supports some traditional Hindu stories in the Bhagavad Gita that mention a great flood and a city that vanished beneath the sea.

It would seem that melting glaciers would have caused flooding in the temperate or tropical areas at low elevations.

Unsafe:

Are you the author of that piece? Or did you steal it from http://www.grandcanyonflood.com/ ?

If you are not the author, how does a Christian justify stealing someone else's work?

Think horse, not zebra. Unsafe probably just forgot to cite the source.

ROFLMAO!!!

Funny how he appeals to non-existent physical evidence, then tells us we shouldn't believe that same evidence because it's procured using our senses, which is the way physical evidence is gathered.

The problem with Biblical Creationsists/Historymakers is that they have a conclusion, and then seek to find some way of connecting facts to it by way of fallacies of logic. Any fact which does not support their pre-conclusion is simply discarded.

This is why you simply cannot trust them in any walk of life. Anyone who would lie so blatantly about scinc e is likely to lie about anything.

Sorry, your Honour, I just forgot to pay for that camera....

If your religion seeks to claim the moral high ground you'd best make sure your dealings in public are squeeky clean.

If the person truly forgot, it would not be theft. The motive would be missing.

If you walk out of a store with a camera without paying for it, and you got out in the parking lot, you'd be charged with theft. The Judge would not take that excuse, and you know it just as well as I do.

Funny how you fundies are always so quick to judge others, and so quick to weasel away responsibility when one of your own do it.

Does Jesus like it when you are hypocritical?

Unsafe - I haven't seen anything in your postings that offers proof of a world wide flood.

There is a theory there but it doesn't seem to be backed by facts.

However, it is a fact that walking out of a store with an unpaid for item can leave you with a court apperance for theft.  Stealing someone's words from the internet is equally dishonest. 

Oh yes, that would probably be the case, I agree. I was unaware, however, that anyone had made you judge of all of us, Witch. In any event, even when charged and found guilty under the law, no true theft would have occured because there would have been no motive. Recall that there must be means, opportunity and motive for a crime to truly have taken place.

Excellent backpeddling Math3Frog. So revealing.

Let's hope you give everyone the same benefit of the doubt, and not just your fellow fundies when they are caught red-handed. I 'm sure you'll go on protesting the innocence of unsafe forever, even though he did plegeraize without citation, which is both illegal and unethical.

It's not like the hypocrisey of fundies is any surprise to anyone. His actions, and your defense of them, is just more reason for people to run away fromn your kind of religion as fast as they possibly can.

I'm sure Satan loves it when you do his work for him.

www.wellingtongrey.net

Permission granted for public use.

Click on the picture to see it full size

There Was NO Ark There was no flood. THESE Are Lies that those who (don't) belive in Jesus Say. This is to show Jesus himself was a liar. Becuase he spoke of Noah and the flood so unless there was one. He's a liar.If Jesus sinned God would not have raised him up So Because God did Raised JESUS he was truthful.Matthew 24-37x38--Luke-17-26-     Luke  Himself  Talked about Noah 3--37x38  I think it all comes down to whether you belive the BIBLE or not.

What it comes down to, is your willingness to use your brain.  The most simple explanation:  Look at the pyramids which pre-date the time of Noah.  Where are the high water marks on them?  Where is the evidence that they were once flooded?  There isn't any.  If a flood covered the earth and drowned all but a handful of people, don't you think this water level might have flooded a pyramid or two?

Look, your bible is a collection of stories.  That's it.  Some are good, and some are immoral, just like you would expect from a very old book written before human rights and gender equality were concerns.  You can quote chapter and verse all day long, but what you have is an old book, with no more relevance to a modern conversation, and no less, than any other ancient work of literature.

Well, there is the water erosion theory, chansen. Some claim there are water marks on the pyramids.

And here's another side of the story just to balance out why someone might tend to believe otherwise.

http://sites.google.com/site/scientificcritiqueofevolution/

I'm not agreeing with  this site (because I am not a scientist), just bringing it up.

They can claim anything they want, or that other believers want to hear.  That doesn't mean they can prove their claims.

Biblical literalists start with the conclusion they want, and look for evidence to back it up.  When you start with a conclusion that you are completely sure of, anything starts to look like evidence.

We have much better explanations for the Grand Canyon and water table fluctuations than anything provided in the bible.  We have the geologic record, not to mention basic math about the volume of water necessary, on our side.  Noah is a story.

The weathering patterns at the base of the sphinx and the pyramids suggest it is caused by water erosion and not wind erosion. The upper halves of these monuments are in better condition than the lower and it is the upper half that has been exposed to the wind the most.

These aren't "biblical scholars" making these claims, they are scientists. If it is true it would be very hard to undermine popular opinion once it has been around for so long.

I try to remain open and interested.

Interesting about the pyramids Waterfall.  I believe that these monuments are far older than Egyptologists' convention says. They too are biased in their findings. Hubby and I recall reading something about the monuments soaking up water as part of their unknown function... ANd the Giza plateau was a much wetter place once. But it has been a long time since we read all that. Time to read up again. I find the Giza plateau utterly facsinating. How the pyramids match the belt of Orion, and the sphynx lines up with the constellation of Leo, in 10,000 BC. All the star alignments with the shafts...

There is evidence of many massive floods after the last ice age, but confined to localized regions, not a world wide flooding.  To the ancients their local culture was all they knew, the whole world to them. That's why we have these myths. The SUmerian genesis myth is of the primordial mound rising from the great waters, the Egyptians had the same myth, so do the Jews and christians with Noah on the hill. It is a myth that arose from localized massive floods.

Marzo, Thank you. There are lots of flooded settlements, India, stone circles off the coast of Brittany, the Mediteranian, are the ones I can think of. ANd the land also rises and sinks according to the shifting weight of the glaciers, causing areas to become higher ground or flooding over the cource of a lifetime, and is still occuring today in the Netherlands and Scandinavia.

ANd instead of arguing about it folks, why not read up! Look for answers! This is a facsinating subject! Graham Hancock has fabulous books about this: Underworld, and Fingerprints of the Gods.

Here's a link to Graham Hancock's website's page for Underworld, with many goodies at the bottom, including an introduction, a chapter of the book, and underwater photographs. http://www.grahamhancock.com/underworld/

An exerpt for ya:

"But now let's remember as well that along continental margins and around islands across the world an area bigger than the Unites States of America was inundated at the end of the Ice Age: 3 million square kilometres (an area the size of India) was submerged around Greater Australia alone; another 3 million square kilometres went under around South-East Asia; the Florida, Yucatan and Grand Bahama Banks were fully-exposed off the Gulf of Mexico; huge areas of land were swallowed up in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the North Sea and the Atlantic, etc, etc, etc - the list really does goes on and on." -Graham Hancock

Of course your arguement requires that Jesus said anything of the sort, and that Jesus was "raised up". Your only source for this proof that the Bible is true is the Bible itself. Circular arguement.

"That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not."

[The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, Vol. 9 p. 134]

Airclean, sounds like you're using the bible as a reason not to learn the truth. I'm not saying it to proove Jesus was a liar. That is irrelevant as I don't even believe in Jesus.

There is proof that the flood story stems back to 5600 BC, before the jews and christians, before Jehova, before the Assyrians and Sumerians and the epic of Gilgamesh, within which the story of a worldwide flood is found with remarkable paralells to the bible, back to prehistory.

I believe the bible is a historic document of cultural significance, containing stories that have been passed down for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years, transmuted over time, and shared in other variants by other religions, and is a useful tool for reseach of historic peoples and their beliefs. But by clinging to it literaly, you deny yourself the chance to learn.

Crazyheart, back to your original question: It was not an old testament story to relate the truth, nor was it real. Well it was real in that there was flooding, but not as punnishment from God. The story is not meant to teach a lesson except to be more aware of where you live and whether or not the levy could break! I think it ain't too smart to live on a Delta, or behind a levy or in reclaimed swamp land. New Orleans should ahve moved uphill after their catastrophy!! 911 is a whole 'nother story!

It seems the Epic of Gilgamesh far pre-dates the Bible (2500-2700 B.C.).  Some of the Biblical flood verses were lifted, nearly word for word copies of that older text, so logically, if one believes the Bible to be the true word of God, then the text it came from must necessarily be true as well, I think.

It seems pretty clear that floods happened, and still do, in every culture and time.  I don't think it would be hard to imagine that it could appear to ancient peoples that a major flood in their area covered the "whole world".    So to me, I think a big flood happened, and someone survived to tell the story, and eventually it was written and passed down the generations.

www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/tab11.htm

Tablet 11:

"I sent forth a dove and released it.

The dove went off, but came back to me; no perch was visible so it circled back to me. I sent forth a swallow and released it. The swallow went off, but came back to me; no perch was visible so it circled back to me. I sent forth a raven and released it. The raven went off, and saw the waters slither back. It eats, it scratches, it bobs, but does not circle back to me. Then I sent out everything in all directions and sacrificed                               (a sheep). I offered incense in front of the mountain-ziggurat."  

"The gods smelled the savor, the gods smelled the sweet savor,

and collected like flies over a (sheep) sacrifice."

Genesis 8:6-12 "⁶ After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark ⁷ and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. ⁸ Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. ⁹ But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. ¹⁰ He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. ¹¹ When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. ¹² He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him."   

Genesis 8:20-21 "²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. ²¹ The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma ..."

As a matter of faith I personally believe in the Biblical account of the flood. As for debating it I'd look at the ark instead of the flood itself. I saw a wonderful documentary years ago about it. It's believed to be found on a mountain in Turkey very close to the border with Kyrgyzstan. It's apparently in two pieces about a 1000 yards apart. One of the teams looking for it got some planking from between the two pieces and had it tested. It was a few thousand years old and the wood was indeginous to the region of Mesopotamia that it was believed that Noah came from. The bigger parts of the ark were ice covered and unreachable. Photos from N.A.S.A. and the U.S. airforce confirm that something is there but the govt. is not about to say it's the ark, just sizable objects under the ice and snow. Also it was found well about the tree line on a mountain with no record of human habitation.

All of this may not technically reach the point of proving it's Noah's Ark but it's certainly intriguing. It should also be said that some other expeditions ran into danger, including being kidnapped by Kurdish rebels in the region. In addition to being up high on a cold mountain with little in the neighborhood to help would be adventurers, it's very hostile politically. The Turkish govt. has banned expeditions in the region for this reason. The Turkish govt. also declared a far more accessible  archaelogical site to be the ark, but most likely it was a fort. It was a large wooden something, but it seems the claim was made for tourist dollars more than science.

I also love the fact that the ark was made with 19th century technology. The ship was six feet long for every one foot wide, and very deep. This particular design has some interesting characteristics. First it can be run by a small crew. Noah had himself, his wife, his three sons, and their wives, eight in all. It also has excellent storage capacity. Most important of all this is a very sturdy ship, it's exactly what you want to be on for turbulent seas. The drawbacks to this design is that it's slow and it corners really, really, lousy. Considering Noah had no place to and lots of time to get there, speed wasn't an issue. Also, what did he need to steer towards or away from? Even the flaws from this design fit perfect. I used the term 19th century technology because it was during the 1800's that nautical engineers figured all of this out precisely, but of course GOD knew this to start with.

For me it does not matter.  What does matter is the message contained in the myth - it is a pity I think that people have abused the word myth to the point that others interpret it as a lie.  Myths provide messages of truth and wisdom.

The message of Noah is not whether the flood happened.  It is how the threat was dealt with.  God gave Man, in the personification of Noah, the tools to avert total disaster.  Noah tried to warn his neighbours; his neighbours ignored him and they were left behind.

Fast forward several thousand years.  The people of New Orleans, particularly those in government, were warned about the devastation a severe hurricane would cause.  They were told the levees would not hold and simulations of the breaks clearly showed what would happen to the 9th ward.  Those warnings were ignored.

Fast forward five more years.  The people of Haiti, particularly those in government, were warned about the devastation an earthquake would cause on the flimsy structures built.  Those warnings were also ignored.

The story is repeated around the world.

Further, as both Haiti and New Orleans show, those who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus missed the point of many of his lessons.  We are to use the tools given to protect the most vulnerable.

In arguing over the reality or unreality of our ancient stories, we miss the point. Whether divinely granted or biologically provided, mankind has the ability to avert disasters and protect those in need.

We have the tools.  We apparently lack the will.

LB

God: The most popular scapegoat for our sins.

     Mark Twain

I have to take issue with those who say that "the ancients" were so backward that they would have thought a global flood would have meant only the area in which they lived.

Long before Christopher Columbus, the Chinese were travelling the globe with ships and land exploration and even trading in what is now called Iraq.

We like to think that everyone thought the world was flat for such a long time but in reality it had been long  established by extensive travels by the "ancients" that it wasn't.

The world was very "global" for a very long time.

"Chinese seafaring merchants and diplomats of the medieval Tang Dynasty (618—907) and Song Dynasty (960—1279) sailed often into the Indian Ocean after visiting ports in South East Asia. Chinese sailors would travel to Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, into the Persian Gulf and up the Euphrates River in modern-day Iraq, to the Arabian peninsula and into the Red Sea, stopping to trade goods in Ethiopia and Egypt (as Chinese porcelain was highly-valued in old Fustat, Cairo).^"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_history_of_China

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exploration

http://www.pbase.com/paulthedane/noahs_ark
This from (IMDB) The Internet movie  Database. -I found it very interesting. You may or may not?

This may not help with noans ark But we are talking about the word of God.Soooooooooo    I Did not write this But I do Agree. You can tell  I Didn't write it no spelling mistakes

The trouble with these sorts of analogies is that you make them up to suit your pre-concieved notions and beliefs.

They are meaningless unless you already believe the notion being illustrated, and if you already believe, the analogy is unnecessary.

That's pretty much the same evil, vile, and disgusting thing that religious leaders have been repeating for thousands of years:  "Believe in God, or bad things happen."

It's just a thinly-veiled threat - an attempt to frighten people into believing, and anyone making such threats is an asshole.

Waterfall, I see your point. The Chineese and the Sumerians knew the world to be round. But they were civilized people, educated, with wise men, astronomers, mathematicians etc., living later on, in the 3rd and 4th millenia BC. The people of the black sea area in 5600 BC were not that advanced. Their world consisted of earth and sky and water, animals to hunt, gods to worship, crops to grow, maybe some people to trade with. They lived in huts in basic lifestyles. This was before Sumererian civilization. This is the mesolithic.

Though I believe there may have been an earlier lost culture that were great seafarers.

There are mesolothic "tells" (mounds where early people made their homes)  that were abandoned then re-habitated by an entirely different people at the time of the black sea flood, using different pottery styles and idols. Geologists and archaeologists agree that fits for refugees from the flood taking up habitation in the abandoned homes.

Oui: Thanks for posting that.

Jon: How do you marry the two stories of the flood? Do you believe the epic of Gilgamesh too? How can the biblical flood be true and not the Sumerian one? If you do accept that the Sumerian flood was the same one, historians have gone back through the Assyrian, Babylonian and Sumerian king lists to date the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh at around 5600 BC. According to the bible, the flood happened in 2300 BC. Did you read Oui's quote from Gilgamesh?

 "But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth;"

So the dove can fly around the whole world? Was it some kind of Super-dove?

As for the bits of wood found on Mt Arrarat, can you point me to a link? This sounds interesting. There was a boat shape in the rock found there, which has been identified by goelogists as a natural rock formation.

Agreed! Here here!

 I understand the ancients were very advanced, however, if your entire region had been wiped out by flooding, and all you could see in any direction was water, and devastation, it would feel like the whole world was destroyed.  

You tell someone about your survival who happens to know another person who knows how to write, and the story is born.  Attaching it to an archetype, such as dying/renewal could make it a myth that the culture can gain much wisdom from.

Personally, I don't subscribe to the literal interpretation.  To me, the much bigger picture is like so many in the Bible, one of dying and rebirth.  The flood waters cleanse away all life, except for the seeds which are contained in the "womb" of the ark.  There is a gestation period, and life is renewed when the waters recede, and the ark delivers its seeds of life.

The Jonah story is similar, he faced certain death when he was swallowed by the fish.  He spent 3 days inside the "womb", and was then released to new life.  The Christ story also fits this dying/renewal theme.

I think the ancients lives revolved around this theme, as the seasons passed, crops are planted, life dies away in winter, and renews each spring.  On an every day basis, the sun dies each and every night, and is reborn each morning.

When the sun reaches the depths of the Winter Solstice (Dec. 21), it "appears" to stay still for 3 days before beginning its slow renewal of daily hours.  Wikipedia states, "The name (solstice) is derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because at the solstices, the Sun stands still in declination; that is, the apparent movement of the Sun's path north or south comes to a stop before reversing direction."

Perhaps we ourselves experience "death" when we are born/incarnated into the flesh (matter) of this world, and are renewed/released to a new life when we eventually leave this body behind.

Once again, for me, the common thread a broader vision can bring to the scriptures carries far more meaning than a merely literal one.  It can tie everything together into One.

Perhaps we'd be farther ahead to take a simple ecological lesson from it - that the earth, whether driven by God or jostled from the ride on the back of a turtle, is capable of throwing off "civilization" in pretty short order.