Flood myth or biblical fact: Should believers swallow the Noah story?

I've seen this graphic and explanation of yours before. Still there is nothing in Genesis to suggest that ^this^ is what it's describing. It doesn't match up in the least bit. You can't even argue that the order of creation described there is correct with respect to how things evolved naturally, though of course we've seen your solution to that one already: Pretend that "create" didn't even really mean "create"

 

That's not how manuscripts works. You take the Dead Sea scrolls and then you replace whatever is missing with the majority text.

 

According to physicists, light appeared within seconds of the big bang, as you can see in the image above proceeding the afterglow light pattern. It was called the photon epoch.

 

The book of Isaiah is complete and almost as it is in the Tanakh and the Bible.

 

There were beings before all this. When god said 'let there be light' the electricians had already laid the cables.

 

The hard thing about answering this question is that there is no grounds for arguing with a person who concludes that what they feel is the truth is the truth. I think there may have been some truth to the accounts of a mass flooding, but the scope of the flooding would obviously be hyperbole since I doubt the entire would was consumed to such an extent. In all likelihood, this flood might have happened well before the time of the earliest Hebrews. They may have incorporated the tales of a legend they heard that was ancient to them in their day. Most legends, myths, and especially religions are built on by older forms of the same so I wouldn't be surprised and I'd find it more likely since a massive worldwide flood in the last ten or so thousand years would likely have left some definitive traces behind to be seen.

I'm really fascinated in wondering how much of it is truth, if any, but I don't think this question will be answered in my lifetime- if ever. Or maybe it has been answered, but the obvious problem it would cause may be overwhelming since...you know. The worlds three leading religions are all Abramaic and basically based on the same thing. Also, the Vaitcan has sealed files and precious historical artifacts that it refuses to release to disclose to the public- both the physical body of it as well as what it is. So I feel fairly certain that what really happened is not going to be answered...or at least truthfully...anytime soon.

 

Give Cupid Dave credit. He has proved that the Republicans need to sponsor legislation to make divorce illegal. Just being denied the sacraments by the Catholic church is clearly not enough!

 

Don't most Christian churches teach salvation is through Christ?

 

Well I am satisfied that the Jews learned the story in Babylon ... when it was about Marduk and Gilgamesh... and that myth was based on flooding of the Euphrates...

Ancient people had no vantage point to see "the whole world".

 

My mind was made up before. The way you represented your experience was that you were terrorized by that church as a child. In fact, all they did was quote Scripture. So you were 'terrorized' by Christ? Oh the drama! 'Forced', 'horrible' ,'plagued'. And why would Romans 1:29 bother you? They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Are these type of people those you want to be around or be like? Putting God's judgement aside, what do you think of these kinds of people?

LOL! What straw man? From you-----------I was forced to go to a church that taught horrible things and I was plagued by night terrors until I was 14, mostly based on the vision of Hell I was being force fed. I was taught that nonbelievers are tortured for eternity when they die. I was taught the homosexuals, like my favorite aunt, would suffer the same fate. I was taught that those who do not love God deserve death (Romans 1:28-32). I was taught that God ordered the death of children and, at times, even carried out the punishment himself (which also occurs in the Bible). I was taught that God was so upset with humanity that he drowned nearly all of them, infants and all. So Scripture is 'horrible' in your eyes.No straw man.

The bottom line is you were taught 'horrible things' by the SB church. Therefor you perceive Scripture as 'horrible' or you are bigoted against Christian teaching or both. Don't get 'thin skinned' at seeing your own words and representations now.

Still waiting on the examples of Christians changing the laws of thermodynamics.

I am so sorry you were terrorized by Christ.

 

Germans knew of concentration camps, much like our internment camps we had for the Japanese here, but they did not know about the extermination camps which were not even in Germany. Something the poster either forgot to mention or did not know.

 

They all do, but I don't think Yard was arguing about that.

 

People are NOT normal.
People who you consider as like you SEEM normal to you, and to themselves, of course.
Certainly it is shocking for women in America to be called sluts when they present themselves as harlots dressed to seduce the yes of any male who might look in their direction, doing so absent-mindedly because it has become so common today.

Nevertheless, these women have used the tools of the trade well known in Japan to be Geisha arts of looking seductive and available to the men.
At the lowest levels they are called prostitutes, but rise up to such more preferred names as sluts, harlots, then at the top pf their success, courtesans.

Seeing our behavior in the terms which apply to the sexual implications concurrent with their behavior is not an attack or an nsult.
It is the actual factual depiction of what role they play the sexual narrative of the Culture.

 

He wasn't...

Meanwhile, lots of people don't realize that Fundamentalism is new.. It only goes back to the 19th century.

http://www.wheaton.edu/isae/defining-evangelicalism/fundamentalism



During the 1920s, fundamentalists waged a war against modernism in three ways: by (unsuccessfully) attempting to regain control of Protestant denominations, mission boards, and seminaries; by supporting (with mixed success) Prohibition, Sunday “blue laws,” and other measures defending traditional Protestant morality and sensibilities; and (fairly successfully) by attempting to stop the teaching of evolution in the public schools, a doctrine which they saw as inextricably linked to the development of “German” higher criticism and the source of the Great War.

This last strategy resulted in the infamous Scopes Trial fiasco of 1925 (later fictionalized in the highly inaccurate play and film Inherit the Wind), in which a substitute biology teacher in Dayton, TN was charged with illegally teaching evolution to his class. The circus atmosphere of the resultant trial–pitting Presbyterian layman, former Secretary of State, and three-time Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution against the famed Chicago criminal defense lawyer Clarence Darrow–discredited the movement in the eyes of America’s intellectual and media elites, resulting in fundamentalism’s subsequent disappearance from the nation’s cultural stage. Since the 1940s, the term fundamentalist has come to denote a particularly aggressive style related to the conviction that the separation from cultural decadence and apostate (read liberal) churches are telling marks of faithfulness to Christ.

Most self-described fundamentalist churches today are conservative, separatist Baptist (though often calling themselves “Bible Baptist” or simply “Bible” churches) congregations such as the churches of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC), or the Independent Fundamental Churches of America (IFCA). Institutions associated with this movement would include Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC) and Tennessee Temple (Chattanooga, TN); representative publications would be The Sword of the Lord and The

continued at the link.

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Fundamentalism was a movement that arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries within American Protestantism reacting against “modernist” theology and biblical criticism as well as changes in the nation's cultural and social scene.

 

Let's look at the text and get your direct criticism clear:

Gen. 1:1 In the beginning, (the Formative/Cosmology Era), God, (the Uncaused First Cause, or the Dark Energy which pre-existed the material Universe, perhaps), created... (all that which has followed the Big Bang from the singularity of Planck Time which consisted of Seven Stages:
1) The Inflation Era
2) The Quark Era
3) Hadron Era
4) Lepton Era
5) Nucleosynthesis Era
6) Opaque Era
7) Matter Era,... in an enormous Einsteinian energy transformation, E = mC^2), the (matter composing the) heaven (beyond the Solar System) and the (accretion disk which congealed into the planet) earth.

http://kofh2u.tripod.com/id19.html

 

Did you get all that crap added to Genesis because it sure isn't in my Bible.

 

You are correct that I am verifying that Exodus was written around 1360BC based upon using evidence support that claim.

I do read that Exodus tells us that ONLY the sons of Aaron were to ever be priests.
Then we check out the genetics of all the priests living today, in order to see if they had one common father at any time.
They did.
It was around 1360BC.

That supports the case being made.

 

Just as a sidebar, let's remember that Noah was not Jewish. Jews are descended of Judah who was born centuries after Noah died.

 

Says who???

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the Revelation was actually a Hebrew apocalypse that John inserted things into.
The writing is claimed to be a copy of an older writing which was slightly altered to add Jesus and various other words into it.

Revelation, "is Hebrew in composition and style, and bears traces of having originally been written in Hebrew, as is shown by the words ρκήυη (tabernacle; xxi. 3) for ; (angels) mistaken for (Kings; ix. 14); ευίκηρευ (has conquered) for (is worthy); and others."

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12712-revelation-book-of

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Says who???

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the Revelation was actually a Hebrew apocalypse that John inserted things into.
The writing is claimed to be a copy of an older writing which was slightly altered to add Jesus and various other words into it.

Revelation, "is Hebrew in composition and style, and bears traces of having originally been written in Hebrew, as is shown by the words ρκήυη (tabernacle; xxi. 3) for ; (angels) mistaken for (Kings; ix. 14); ευίκηρευ (has conquered) for (is worthy); and others."

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12712-revelation-book-of

 

Earlier Jewish eschatology was written in Hebrew but the book of Revelation was written in Greek.. Hebrew was largely a dead language after the Babylonian exile...... up until 1948..

In Jesus time the people spoke Greek and Aramaic.

 

Photons appeared.

Very high energy photons.

They were way above the frequencies of visible light.
Visible light comes ONLY from Atos which have electrons spinning ao=round their neuclei.
As those electrons move up into higher, or drop down into lower orbits, light photons are emitted.
But early on in the BB, atoms where Plasma, or without electrons.

 

In this landmark two-hour special, NOVA takes viewers on a scientific journey that began 3,000 years ago and continues today. The film presents the latest archeological scholarship from the Holy Land to explore the beginnings of modern religion and the origins of the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament. This archeological detective story tackles some of the biggest questions in biblical studies: Where did the ancient Israelites come from? Who wrote the Bible, when, and why? How did the worship of one God—the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—emerge?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/bibles-buried-secrets.html

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Could be but he is so obviously uber righteous...........

 

Before now you've been waffling between not believing that SBs teach hell for the unregenerate saying that, of course, they do. If your mind is made up, it was only made up just now.

They taught their interpretation of the Scripture. As you can see from other discussions on this thread, there are other, less terrorizing interpretations. As much as cupid dave and I disagree, I would not have been "terrorized" by his interpretation, nor by Qchan's.

No. Christ never did anything to harm or upset me. The SBC isn't Christ.

Oh the unchristian response to the negative experiences of others!

First of all, you aren't quoting the Bible we used. We used the KJV. And it seems like you purposefully left of the next verse, which was the most important part of my complaint:

32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

You know who else is on this list, according the the KJV? . . . wait for it . . . those who debate.

Why would it bother me? Because I value human life too much to think that "God-haters" (which our church taught rather broadly), those who are insolent/arrogant/boastful, those who disobey their parents, those without understanding (again, broadly interpreted by my church, besides being morally disgusting -- how is a lack of understanding worthy of death), those "without natural affection" (homosexuals, according to my church), etc. deserve to die.

Depends. My wife had good reason for disobeying her parents. I rather like her and would prefer not to have her killed. But what do I think about these people in general? In general, they don't sound great, but most of them sound immeasurably better company than anyone who would say they deserve to die.

Some scripture is, depending on how it is interpreted. I don't agree with cupid dave's interpretation, but it isn't "horrible". Qchan's interpretation isn't "horrible". The SBC's is. And other scripture, even most scripture, isn't horrible at all. I've already mentioned that Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite pieces of writings, and I'd like to add James to that list as well. I'm also very fond of Mark. Job, for all of its bad reputation, seems to me to be a story about a man who looks for answers as to why evil exists, and instead of giving answers, God offers comfort. I like that. Ruth? Another wonderful group of scripture. And Song of Solomon? Exquisite, both as a piece of erotic poetry and as a symbol of God's love for his congregation (as my church interpreted it).

Best if all, I love the story of Israel himself. It sets a wonderful stage. The rest of the Hebrew Scripture will not be about people who blindly follow God or blindly rebel. It will be about a people who form covenants with God and who wrestle with him throughout their history. Beautiful stuff.

I perceive some interpretation of some Scripture to be horrible.

And the double standard is back. By disagreeing with the SBC, I am "bigoted" against them. Vocalizing disagreement is "bigotry" while a Christian that vocalizes disagreement with me while adding that the Lord and creator of the universe has turned his ire against me, that I am a fool, that I deserve death (as all unrepentant sinners do) and that I deserve to be tortured for eternity . . . well doing anything other than ignoring that would be dramatic, and debating against that, well, that would be the real bigotry.

Why are you still waiting to click on the link that I already supplied?

I am so sorry that you can't distinguish between verbal disagreement and bigotry, and I'm sorry you can't distinguish between the SBC and Christ.

 

Thank you, Qchan. And you are right -- that wasn't what I was talking about. There are plenty of Christians, C.S. Lewis springs immediately to mind, who maintain that salvation is through Christ without holding to the SBC-style damnation.

 

Oh ya, but that usually hides so many sins.....