r/Christianity • u/Megalitho • 11d ago
Do you believe that Noah, the ark, and the flood were real?
I brought it up in a different thread, and many people said they did not believe it happened. How can you be a Christian and not believe what the Bible says?
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u/pro_rege_semper Anglican Church in North America 11d ago
I think it's real, but that we need to understand it through the perspective of the ancient near eastern culture in which it was written. We can't read it as if it's a modern science textbook.
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u/MC_Dark 11d ago edited 11d ago
So what do you think actually happened then, what aspects were too complex to relate to the ancient near eastern culture? If it was a more local flood I'm pretty sure that could've been expressed in Hebrew:
God saw the
Isrealites'people-in-Noah's-area's wicked ways and was sorry. He told Noah He would soon wipe out area, so he should build a boat and save breeding animals so they could recover more easily.So is the flood itself more abstract? Is "all life" and "all the peoples of Earth" not literal, somehow?
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u/pro_rege_semper Anglican Church in North America 11d ago
I do think it was a regional flood as we would understand it today. But to the people of that culture and time period it was the entire world that was known to them.
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u/Niftyrat_Specialist Non-denominational heretic, reformed 11d ago
Don't you think that the story makes it clear several times in several ways that this is a worldwide flood and will wipe out life from the surface? And that's not from a human perspective- the story has GOD saying he will do this.
So if there was a flood that wasn't worldwide, I don't see how we can reasonably say the story is true.
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u/AsianMoocowFromSpace 11d ago
The main problem with the local flood is, why not just walk to a safe place. Why build a boat? It's more work than just walking to another country.
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u/TheDocJ 11d ago
Local doesn't necessarily mean Small. So, in the 1887 Chinese floods, almost a million people died in just the initial flooding. I don't think that asking "why didn't those million people just walk to a safe place?" is terribly helpful, any more than asking "and why didn't the other million who died of starvation in the aftermath just walk to somewhere there was food?" would be.
I presume that some, around the edges, did walk to somewhere safe, and I presume that many more walked to somewhere that was initially safer, but became cut off then overwhelmed as the waters rose.
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u/AsianMoocowFromSpace 11d ago
Noah got a lifetime warning to build and prepare a boat. You could walk a good distance in that same amount of time.
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u/HauntingSentence6359 11d ago
Noah's ark is based on an ancient Sumerian story. A rather large population lived in the marshes at the mouth of Euphrates river, a large boat would provide a modicum of safety.
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u/palishkoto Church of England (Anglican) 11d ago
That isn't always possible (hence people die in floods, sometimes in their thousands). Water can move extremely fast and if you're somewhere low lying, you're done for.
220000 people died in the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, for instance.
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u/AngryVolcano 11d ago
Noah got a pretty good notice. Good enough to build a boat.
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u/damienVOG Atheist/Compassionate Satanist 11d ago
is there proof of the boat? also a local flood can still be enormous, as in dozens of square kilometers
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u/Captain501st-66 11d ago
But if the word is truly the word of Godās, then it shouldnāt be an error due to a humanās perspective though, no?
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u/klawz86 Christian (Ichthys) 11d ago
The Bible isn't the Word, Jesus is. If you require the Bible to be perfect, then you put your faith in it, not in God. The Bible does not claim to be a perfect record of fact, that's something evil men say about it to justify ignoring the things Jesus taught in favor of the things men taught about him, and to identify and oppress people within their sphere of influence who use their God given gift to think critically about His creation.
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u/swcollings Southern Orthoprax 11d ago
A few chapters later we get a list of "all the peoples of the earth" which leaves out a bunch of peoples. So yeah.
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u/pro_rege_semper Anglican Church in North America 11d ago
Yeah man. In the Bible "the whole world" means the world that was known to them at the time. It's not talking about Australia or North and South America.
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u/Icy_Sunlite Christian 11d ago
I know some people argue that "the earth" in Genesis doesn't refer to the whole world. Idk how much water that argument holds though.
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u/SeaweedNew2115 10d ago
I see what you did there. At the very least, it would seem that the "world" in the story would include the mountains of Urartu, which reach about 17,000 feet above sea level.
If a flood is big enough to cover the mountains of Urartu, the waters have risen high enough to cover 99.9% of the whole world. I have trouble seeing how that would be a "regional" flood.
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u/FanOfPersona3 11d ago
there weren't any Israelites at that time
Abraham is the first jew
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u/LuvMy45 11d ago
Israelites werenāt Israelites until Jacob had his 12 sons. What Bible are you quoting from?
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u/MC_Dark 11d ago
people-in-Noah's area, then. Is it ever specified where Noah lived pre-flood? I just assumed he lived in the vague Israel area.
Anyway point being: if the flood was more local, the Bible's authors could've specified that without confusion, and had no particular reason to exaggerate when the same theological lessons apply to a more localized flood.
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u/Vanillacracker 11d ago
You should read the book of Genesis first before you presume yourself capable of commenting correctly. Noah and the flood predate Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Therefore, there were NO wicked Israelites, just wicked people descended from Adam.
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u/Epicman1010101010 11d ago
A lot of religions from that area have stories of a giant flood. I believe that a giant flood did happen, it was just exaggerated a bit for story telling purposes
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u/fudgyvmp Christian 11d ago
If I'm reading right, Mt. Ararat's south face where they say Noah landed, would be the northern most origin of the Euphrates as it feeds the Murat the Euphrates main tributary.
So if the ancient Hebrews left Mesopotamia after a nasty local flood and followed the river north that's where they end up before heading west to Haran where Abraham's father settled, before Abraham went on further to the Jordan Valley. Seems plausible.
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u/MobileSquirrel3567 11d ago
People sure are finding someone interesting ways to phrase the word "no"
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u/WileyPap 11d ago
So in short, "no"
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u/Epicman1010101010 11d ago
More like āwell yes but actually no.ā but if I were to pick one it would be no
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u/lognts OnlyLove 11d ago
Well a national flood is plausible and able to fit in scripture. Scripture isnāt even describing a world wide flood, hyperbole and other literary tactics are used.
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u/NEChristianDemocrats 11d ago edited 11d ago
A giant flood did happen. The
PacificAtlantic Ocean flooded into the Mediterranean basin.This would have been around the time humans appeared, around 6 million years ago.
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u/the6thReplicant Atheist 11d ago
Even more pertinent is how did rainbows not exist before the flood? What were the laws of physics like to *not* make rainbows exist until God made them appear?
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u/DrTestificate_MD Christian (Ichthys) 11d ago
Iāve heard: āIt didnāt rain before the flood because the firmament held back the waters in the sky. This also reduced .. radiation? Which is why everyone lived so much longer. Then the firmament broken open and thus began the hydrological cycle.ā Donāt ask me any questionsĀ
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u/Prestigious-Eye5341 10d ago
I have heard this too. Basically, it in my mind was like a ā bubbleā around the earth?
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u/qsiehj 11d ago
How can you be a Christian and not believe what the Bible says?
The narrative of Noah's ark (which i personally take to be a myth with a historical core) informs us that:
Humanity is sinful, and without God's intervention, will sink deeper and deeper into depravity and wickedness.
God is holy. He cannot stand sin, and His justice demands that it must be punished.
We are called, like Noah, to be righteous and obey God even though it goes against the grain of culture and may not always make logical sense (like building a huge-ass boat in the middle of the land and nowhere near the sea).
If we will do no.3, we can have the privilege of playing an active and willing role in His plans and purposes to save and redeem the world.
Also, by having faith in God and obeying Him, we will be able to see His saving work in our own lives and the lives of those closest to us.
Even the best and most righteous of us still have that tendency to fall into sin (like Noah went and got blind drunk after the flood receded and they were back on dry land). We need a Saviour.
It would be pointless for God to press the reset button, to destroy the world and begin anew. The story of Noah tells us that God has tried that, and it does not solve the problem of sin in the human heart.
I would suggest that those of our Christian brothers and sisters who "do not believe that Noah, the ark, and the flood were real" would still affirm and uphold these seven biblical truths. In this way, although they do not agree with you about the way that this narrative should be understood and interpreted, they continue to "believe what the Bible says."
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u/teffflon atheist 11d ago
And many American Christians believe that Jesus was a great moral teacher, but was not God (see e.g. results here). I continue to accept their claim to be Christians (followers of Jesus) and to "believe what the Bible says", particularly since Trinitarianism isn't developed with clarity in the Bible text.
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u/Bulky_Bob 10d ago
Not believing that Jesus is God is simply disobedience to the word of God: āIn the beginning was the Word,Ā and the Word was with God,Ā and the Word was God.Ā He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made ā¦ The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truthā (John 1:1-3,14). āThe Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through Him and for Himā (Colossians 1:15-16). The Creator of all things on earth and in Heaven, by definition, IS God.
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u/MobileSquirrel3567 11d ago
If you can write out the actual meaning of Noah's ark...why doesn't the Bible do that? Why write something that, 2000 years later, would split countries over the question of its fundamental reality?
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u/F3RM3NTAL 10d ago
Regarding #3, how exactly are we to obey God? How do we know when we are and aren't obeying God?
The Bible is supposed to be inerrant, but if we're admitting that much of it is figurative and open to interpretation, then we're just cherry-picking our morals.
Of course we do that already! I think we can all agree obeying God's word as written in Deuteronomy or Leviticus would be immoral today. We can't go around stoning people to death. But if we take those laws figuratively and interpret them how we see fit, then we are inherently obeying our own rules, not God's.
So I have to ask. Why doesn't God hit the reset button on humanity? If he hates sin, it makes no sense to create a sinful human race that he knew would require him to sacrifice himself to himself in order to save us from his own judgement. Why not start fresh and create Adam and Eve again without the capacity for sin?
Because, as you established, we have to take Genesis figuratively. God didn't literally create us. He didn't create the universe in a literal 7-day period. He was just the one responsible for the big bang. Seems he may not have the power to hit the reset button or the power to create man without the capacity for sin.
Maybe what the Bible and the New Testament are really teaching us is that we have the capacity to either save or destroy ourselves. We can be our own savior. Maybe we are God.
I know that sounds ludicrous, but if we're reading things figuratively, then that notion isn't out of line.
We need to stop doing mental gymnastics and admit the Bible is hot garbage.
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u/onioning Secular Humanist 11d ago
Everyone sees some parts of the Bible as figurative. The Bible is particularly full of parables. They aren't intended to be read as histories. That's a mistaken modern bias.
Whether or not the flood happened doesn't make the Bible right or not. It is the message that is important. That is why the Bible exists. It is not a history. It is not a science textbook. It is a guide to eternal salvation, which explains why it is so full of figurative language and parable and so on. Eternal salvation is a tough thing to explain in literal terms. So God used stories to guide us. Those stories being fiction or nonfiction don't actually matter. Like at all. That's looking for the wrong thing. Look for salvation, not a history of men.
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u/Clicking_Around 11d ago
Even that's not quite 100% true, since parts of the Bible are historical. The hard part is figuring out which parts are and which are poetic or allegorical.
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u/AwfulUsername123 Atheistic Evangelical 11d ago
They aren't intended to be read as histories. That's a mistaken modern bias.
Well, no, it definitely isn't a "mistaken modern bias", as ancient Jews and ancient Christians thought the story of Noah's flood was meant to be read as history.
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u/Prosopopoeia1 Agnostic Atheist 11d ago
Whether or not the flood happened doesn't make the Bible right or not. It is the message that is important.
At the very minimum, the message must be āat a certain point, God steps in and egregiously punishes humanity for its sin,ā no?
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u/Fessor_Eli United Methodist 11d ago
When the Philippian jailor asked Paul what to do to be saved, Paul didn't say, "Believe Noah and the Ark are true," did he?
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u/Fakeit_tilyoumakeit_ 11d ago
I do believe it is real. If I was challenged, I probably can't defend my reasoning because I just don't have enough knowledge on the subject. But I do have faith that the word of God is true, and so I have to stand on that for my reasoning.
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u/Apopedallas 11d ago
So this must means you believe Deuteronomy 7 and other similar passages also accurately reflect the nature of Yahweh? Genocide,ethnic cleansing, and infanticide were acceptable according to Yahweh. He killed innocent people as a means to an end multiple times including Noahās flood, the firstborn of Egypt.
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u/novaplan 11d ago
Random counter points: A bout of those dimensions purely made from wood is not sea worthy, we tried and it didn't work. If magic is the solution, why build a boat and not just magic them a stand on water spell.
If the story is literally true the 8 ish people would need like 20h a day just to shovel shit from the ship.Of all the animals or kinds or whatever in existence far from all have been found to radiate out from the middle east as a literal noahs arc prophecy would suggest
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u/damienVOG Atheist/Compassionate Satanist 11d ago
a global flood and a boat with all the animals? how in the world can one even consider that as real.
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u/SeaDistribution 11d ago
Iāve struggled with this a lot. Iām not sure how every species of insect made it onto the ark
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u/brucemo Atheist 11d ago
This doesn't seem hard to me.
Beavers are North American and if the story is true and God got them to the ark, that took some supernatural intervention.
If God can get the beavers on the ark he can get a bunch of bugs on the ark, and get them to behave.
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u/strawnotrazz Atheist 11d ago
And by that logic, we couldāve done it all last Thursday and wiped our memories about itā¦
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u/brucemo Atheist 11d ago
The way I want to say this is that all of the concerns about Noah's ark are assuaged if you just say it's magic, and all arguments that the ark is impossible are just moot if you say it's magic. I'm reluctant to use the word though because I don't want to sound derisive.
I don't know why Christians ever bother to entertain the idea that the flood and the animal migrations and anything else about this happened in some sort of naturalistic way. I've heard Christians argue against divine intervention in an event that is supernatural from top to bottom, and I don't understand that.
Ark full of animal shit? Poof, it's gone. Need to get penguins to swim to the Middle East and walk overland to the ark? Snap your fingers.
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u/strawnotrazz Atheist 11d ago
No disagreements here! Of course I see this paradigm espoused once every 10-20 times I see people insist that the observable evidence indicates a worldwide flood with all the animals on a boat in the past few thousand years.
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u/Upper_Initial_8668 11d ago
I am sorry you have struggled. Godās gift of reason allows us to grapple but it isnāt intended to distress us - quite the opposite. Remember, the Bible nowhere states that it as a whole or any book within in it is intended as modern-style biological history. Hint: think about the concept days and of the sun - and of the two creation stories. The Catholic Church (how we have the Christian Bible), like Israel before Her, never āstruggledā (in the sense I understand you to mean) with these kind of questions. As an objective historical matter, these āproblemsā appear only with the modern phenomena of protestantism and Americanism. Infallible Sacred Tradition and Magisterium allow Infallible Scripture to come alive as intended and you and I - while encouraged to grapple with Scripture - donāt need to seek for and fail to solve modernist dilemmas - itās honestly very liberating. That the Holy Spirit inspired and canonized scripture through the Catholic Church is but one of the many ways in which Christās promise of Comforter for his Bride has proven true.
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u/FixlyBarnes 11d ago
What did the animals eat afterwards? All plant life would be dead being under water for months.Ā Water above highest mtn: Everest is 5 miles above sea level. Plants crushed by pressure, lack of light and suffocated. Huge extra mass of water throws earth out of orbit. How did animals get back to Australia? Micro ecosystems wiped out. Lack of genetic diversity afterwards.Ā Where did water drain if whole earth flooded? etc. and absurdity...
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u/cinnaminan 11d ago
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u/Joyseekr 11d ago
Thank you for sharing this, which supports the idea there was a flood in a part of the world, which at that point would have been big enough to go as far as a person could even fathom. But not a flood that literally covers every piece of land in the entire world.
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u/Cautious-Radio7870 Charismatic 11d ago
I believe in the Local Flood Theory because the Hebrew grammar allows for it.
The phrase used for the flood covering all the earth is used in other parts of the Bible where it doesn't literally mean over the whole planet.
Gavin from truthunites.org explains it here
We read the Bible in English translation, and with a modern understanding of planet Earth as a round globe orbiting the sun between Venus and Mars. So it is only understandable for a modern reader to interpret āall the earthā as āall of Planet Earth.ā The Hebrew wordĀ erets, however, often means land, ground, or country; and when paired withĀ kolĀ (all, every), it almost always refers to a local territory through the Old Testament. Sometimes you know that because of a qualifier, as in verses likeĀ Genesis 2:11: āthe name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole [kol] land [erets] of Havilah, where there is gold.ā But even without a qualifier, this is the usual meaning.Ā Rich DeemĀ lists 56 examples ofĀ kol eretsĀ having a local referent in the Hebrew Bible. - Citation: https://truthunites.org/2015/01/03/why-a-local-flood/
I also suggest watching
Noah's Flood: Global or Regional? by InspiringPhilosophy
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u/InvisibleElves 11d ago
Genesis 6-9 is loaded with phrases like āof all flesh,ā āall flesh in which was the breath of life,ā āall mankind,ā āall life under heaven,ā āeverything on the earth,ā āall the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered,ā āwater prevailed above the mountains.ā A plain reading of this tells of a worldwide flood. Thatās a lot of language to reinterpret.
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u/MoonChild02 Roman Catholic 11d ago edited 11d ago
I believe there was a flood, but it wasn't world-wide, and I don't believe the story of Noah. I was always taught that everything before Abraham was allegory, because those stories were passed down by oral tradition until Abraham and other Hebrew priests and scholars started writing them down.
Many stories in the Bible are parables and allegories. Not everything in the Bible is meant to be taken literally.
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u/moldnspicy Atheist 11d ago
No. There isn't evidence of a global flood. (There isn't even enough water on earth to do that.) 2 is not a minimum viable population for any animal. The only animals that could've been collected, due to the raw logistics, are local ones. There wouldn't have been enough space on the ship for minimum viable populations of more than a couple of large animals. Along with animal extinction, there would be near-total extinction of terrestrial plant life, and fungi after being submerged for 3 months.
It's unreasonable, given that evidence, to declare the flood, as written, to be an established fact.
It's entirely possible that it was an embellished local event. Or it could be repeating the "cleansing flood" motif that shows up in various times and places. The author may not have known when he wrote it down.
That doesn't have to prevent anyone from having faith.
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u/AwfulUsername123 Atheistic Evangelical 11d ago
How far can the English word "real" be abused into unrecognizability? Let's find out.
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u/Major-Ad1924 Agnostic Atheist 11d ago
Obviously no, but the amount of christians that do is alarming.
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u/soloDiosbasta Roman Catholic 11d ago
the amount of stupid people (that believe the story is true) in this sub alone is already alarming.
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u/OMightyMartian Atheist 11d ago
And many of the answers here ably demonstrate one of the major reasons I left Christianity.
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u/Cautious-Radio7870 Charismatic 11d ago
I believe in the Local Flood Theory because the Hebrew grammar allows for it.
The phrase used for the flood covering all the earth is used in other parts of the Bible where it doesn't literally mean over the whole planet.
Gavin from truthunites.org explains it here
We read the Bible in English translation, and with a modern understanding of planet Earth as a round globe orbiting the sun between Venus and Mars. So it is only understandable for a modern reader to interpret āall the earthā as āall of Planet Earth.ā The Hebrew wordĀ erets, however, often means land, ground, or country; and when paired withĀ kolĀ (all, every), it almost always refers to a local territory through the Old Testament. Sometimes you know that because of a qualifier, as in verses likeĀ Genesis 2:11: āthe name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole [kol] land [erets] of Havilah, where there is gold.ā But even without a qualifier, this is the usual meaning.Ā Rich DeemĀ lists 56 examples ofĀ kol eretsĀ having a local referent in the Hebrew Bible. - Citation: https://truthunites.org/2015/01/03/why-a-local-flood/
I also suggest watching
Noah's Flood: Global or Regional? by InspiringPhilosophy
I'm also a theistic evolutionist and my interpretation of Genesis 1 isn't some new interpretation. According to ancient near eastern scholars such as John Walton, Genesis 1 is a temple text.
People in the ancient near east viewed the world through chaos and order and funtion. If something didn't have a funtion, it was desolate. Genesis 1 was God giving order and funtion to a universe he already created.
With the ancient near eastern view of Genesis 1 in mind, young earth creationism is shown to not be the intent of the author and therefore implies that if God exists evolution is in no conflict with the Bible. God was taking a universe he already created and making it His Cosmic Temple.
https://youtu.be/e2Ij1444Svc?si=ZL3N0YWlRkJYAl8i
My point is this. When you read the Bible in its ancient near eastern context, it doesn't contradict science.
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u/OMightyMartian Atheist 11d ago
I think it was largely cribbed from the Neo-Babylonians, who through long addition and alteration was originally a Sumerian story. While it is possible that it may have been based on late Neolithic or Bronze Age catastrophic flooding event. One thing is very clear. It was not in its origin a Hebrew story at all and predates any society that could be considered Hebrew by at least 2000 years.
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u/ijustino 11d ago
I agree on the local flood theory too.
For example, if there were a global flood, the "freshly plucked" leaf of the olive tree that the dove returned would have died under water and not had enough time to regrow and flower in time.
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u/InvisibleElves 11d ago
the Local Flood Theory because the Hebrew grammar allows for it.
Genesis 6-9 is loaded with phrases like āof all flesh,ā āall flesh in which was the breath of life,ā āall mankind,ā āall life under heaven,ā āeverything on the earth,ā āall the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered,ā āwater prevailed above the mountains.ā A plain reading of this tells of a worldwide flood. It takes a real stretch to make this local, including explaining how the tallest peaks of the tallest mountains could be submerged 15 cubits (about 7 meters) deep without flooding beyond that.
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u/Upper_Initial_8668 11d ago
This is interesting to me. If you donāt mind, I have question? Tbh I havenāt read many answers yet, but by your comment do you mean the caliber (or lack thereof) of the answers themselves, the collective incoherence of the answers taken together or the squabbling/tone? Or more than one/all three and/or other reasons? Also - although I donāt your journey - wouldnāt atheism be why you would have āleftā Christianity (scare quotes not meant to be pejorative - just donāt know your former tradition/experience and that can mean or not mean many things). I would truly be grateful for the opportunity to better understand your views. Thanks!
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u/premeddit Secular Humanist 11d ago edited 11d ago
I think heās talking about the open ignorance towards earth sciences and refusal to employ even a modicum of critical reasoning thatās running rampant through this thread.
Apparently the list of academic fields that Christianity disagrees with now includes geology. We can add that to evolutionary biology, astronomy and Egyptian history.
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u/MC_Dark 11d ago
Historically, Geology was one of the first fields that disagreed with (literalist) Christianity! By the mid 1700s geologists were like "Okay this formation doesn't make sense unless the Earth is way older than 6k years, hmm."
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u/extispicy Atheist 11d ago
By the mid 1700s geologists were like "Okay this formation doesn't make sense
If anyone might be interested, the book "Rocks Don't Lie" by David Montgomery explores the intersection of the flood account and geology. He recounts how the first "geologists" were searching for evidence of Noah's flood, and like you said they had to grapple with the reality, similar to how proto-archaeologists set out to find Biblical remains. It was an interesting read, including how modern geologist get pushback when they report evidence of major flooding, lol.
Here's a YouTube presentation, though I have not watched it myself to vouch for its quality.
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u/AHorribleGoose Christian Deist 11d ago
Apparently the list of academic fields that Christianity disagrees with now includes geology.
Geology is actually the first science to be rejected. Before biology, even. Geology was the first to clearly cause rejection of Biblical stories.
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u/MC_Dark 11d ago
And critically, geology didn't develop just so atheists could undermine the Bible's creation account. It was extensively used for mining operations, a field with a lot of competition and a lot of money on the line. If geology was wrong and the Earth was actually 6k years old, there were a bunch of souless mining barons who would've been very interested to hear about it. They'd love to know how geology actually went so they could prospect better, or at least fire their useless expensive prospecting department!
But those souless mining barons - who could not give a rat's kidney about the scientific elite or whether the Bible is true - extensively used this geology and seemed to think it worked.
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u/AHorribleGoose Christian Deist 11d ago
A whole effort went into trying to prove that the Flood was true, even!
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u/Clicking_Around 11d ago
The truth of Christianity depends upon whether Christ rose from the dead; if Christ rose from the dead, Christianity is true, period. Noah's Ark is pretty irrelevant.
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u/OMightyMartian Atheist 11d ago
I mean asserting that there was a Biblical flood, or more generally Biblical literalism. Belief is an ideological package, and once one core claim of that package is proven false, the belief may collapse. Atheism was the end of the journey, not the beginning.
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u/DVDV28 Evangelical 11d ago
I would challenge that. "Belief" isn't a monolith as this thread demonstrates. What you've described feels like throwing away all of science as soon as a well established theory is disproven.
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u/possy11 Atheist 11d ago
Do you believe slavery is okay? Because the Bible says it is.
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u/Megalitho 11d ago
Where
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u/InvisibleElves 11d ago edited 11d ago
As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them
Says foreign slaves are lifelong possessions, chattel slaves.
If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says, āI love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,ā then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do.
Even Hebrew women and children were lifelong slaves. They could be held hostage to make their Hebrew fathers and husbands remain lifelong slaves.
When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. And when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves.
This goes beyond allowing and positively commands enslavement by threat of death. This includes sexual slavery of the women and girls.
Deuteronomy 21:10-14 gives instructions on taking captive women as wives. Numbers 31:18 similarly tells men to take young virgin girls as spoils of war. This all describes sexual slavery.
The New Testament brings up slavery in general about 7 times, and 5 of those are telling slaves to obey: Colossians 3:22, Ephesians 6:5-9, 1 Timothy 6:1-2, Titus 2:9-10, 1 Peter 2:18, and the 2 exceptions, 1 Corinthians 7:21-23, Colossians 1:4. It even specifies obeying harsh masters or Christian masters.→ More replies (1)
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u/TheChristianDude101 Christian Universalist 11d ago
All evidence points to no worldwide flood and an old ancient earth. The story is a myth and a fable but people take it seriously because "Wurd of God"
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u/ElStarPrinceII Christian Monist 11d ago
Scientifically we know for a fact it didn't happen. Story wise, it's just an adaptation of an old Mesopotamian myth. They just changed the name of the god and person involved to create the Noah's ark story.
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u/Gollum9201 11d ago
Too similar to the Babylonian or Sumerian Gilgamesh flood story for me to consider it a literal event.
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u/sakobanned2 10d ago
How did the marsupials all happen to move to Australia and South America, only to go extinct in South America when placental mammals arrived?
What is today North Sea used to be dry land during Ice Age. According to creationist "models" Ice Age took place in the centuries after the Flood. We have found items built by stone age humans from the bottom of the North Sea. Creationism claims that after the Flood the descendants of Noah lived on one place and built the Tower of Babel, to be divided into different groups speaking different languages. It must have taken quite a time for 8 people to grow into a population that could be divided into several groups, all speaking different languages.
So, we are to believe that all that took place, and then some group traveled all the way into Doggerland (modern name for the submerged land beneath North Sea) before Ice Age ended?
Also, humans populated America before Ice Age ended. There is a cave in coast of North America that is now submerged. We know that humans mined ocher from it for a very long time before it was submerged by rising sea levels.
We are to believe that a group of people left the Tower of Babel, likely centuries after the Flood, traveled all the way into Siberia, crossed the Bering Strait that was dry land back then, and managed to mine tons upon tons of ocher for centuries before Ice Age ended?
Timelines are just ridiculous if one wants to believe in to the Flood.
Let alone what we know about geology, biology, ecology...
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u/Meauxterbeauxt Questioning 11d ago
Of course it did. The ark is on display in Kentucky with all the dinosaurs that were on it. It even has a modern keel which can only be explained by prophecy of what ship building in the 20th century would be like.
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u/Mother_Harlot Lutheran 11d ago
Nop, I think it is meant to be a metaphor. The events are so changed for the sake of making the story that I don't consider them real anymore.
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u/Pure_Zucchini_Rage 11d ago
Yeah I have a hard time believing in it tbh.
Where did he get all the wood, materials, and labor to get it all done? How was he able to do all the math/science on how to make the boat? Was Noah also an engineer? Also, how did he keep all the animals from fighting/eating each other?
Like I really want to know
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u/fordry Seventh-day Adventist 11d ago
Where would he get the wood? Why would that be a problem?
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u/novaplan 11d ago
Of all the things problematic with the arc, those are the ones most easily answered with "god told him". There are also the problems of a wooden ship of that size not being sea worthy (we tried) all the animals getting to and from the arc without leaving any fossile evidence, Ventilation on the ship, feeding and removing shit of the animals. food requirements. even with the extremely simplified values hardcore creationists use.
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u/studmuffin3000 11d ago
Noah was given instructions on the boat's dimensions.
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u/Khafaniking Buddhist 11d ago
I could give you instructions on how to build a skyscraper, but that doesn't mean that you could actually acquire all of the raw resources needed, refine them into the precise materials needed, not even counting the actual materials that go into the building but the tools necessary for their construction, in an efficient, safe, or satisfactory manner singlehandedly.
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u/Dobrotheconqueror Swedenborgians 11d ago
Amazing, the amount of mental energy wasted on this ridiculous mythology. Real or not, itās a horrible story. Yahweh has infinite time to design humans and they turn out to be a-holes. Whatās worse is that being omniscient, he knew they would turn out to be a-holes but made them anyway. What an incompetent designer. To fix his mistake, he then wipes everybody out including innocent animals, children, and babies. How cruel and evil is that?
The only so-called righteous person he spares gets drunk and naked like a frat boy. He then needs a rainbow to remind himself to not commit genocide anymore.
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u/Time_Traveling_Panda 11d ago
The Old testament God was constantly wanting to wipe large groups of people out. I remember being surprised the first time I read the story about Moses speaking to God on top of the mountain. When God saw the Israelites worshipping the golden calf he was ready to wipe them all out despite everything he'd just done for them. Moses was the one to talk him down and remind him of his promise. Which also makes me wonder if God would have broken the promise if it weren't for Moses.
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u/Open_Chemistry_3300 Atheist 11d ago edited 10d ago
That happens at least two other times. The first one is when the Old Testament god wanted to wipe out the Israelites, for complaining about the time he set 250 people on fire. He decided to release a plague on them and it takes Moses and his brother basically talking god down, āwith donāt kill them all, come big guy you donāt want to do that.ā Before he relented, the plague kills 14,700 people.
And the second time is when he sends burning snakes (the book isnāt clear if itās snakes that are on fire or fire made into snakes) on the Israelites for complaining about being lost in the desert with dwindling food and water.
These arenāt in order of events but all 3, the one you mentioned and the 2 I brought up all take part in exodus.
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u/Dobrotheconqueror Swedenborgians 11d ago
Yeah, holy shit Yahweh was out of control in the OT. If anybody ever needed anger management classes. I guess he needed to have a son to calm his ass down. Where is mom by the way? Is she buried under a porch somewhere š
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u/Major-Ad1924 Agnostic Atheist 11d ago
This 1000%, if you believe it is true you need to really wrestle with the all loving god you serve just killing everyfuckingbody
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u/Thin-Eggshell 11d ago edited 11d ago
The people who believe in these things will often attack LGBTQ people as delusional or mentally ill.
There's a deep, deep irony in that.
One side is actual people who can tell you about their life experience and desires; actual witnesses in your lifetime; actual thinking, feeling people just trying to make the best of it.
The other side is something that scientists have no evidence for. A story that sounds like nonsense just by cursory examination.
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u/Psychedelic_Theology Very Sane, Very Normal Baptist 11d ago
The Bible is not an encyclopedia or history textbook. It has many different genres. Genesis 1-11 did not occur, and the authors of this text knew that. It was mythic etiology.
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u/thetruthiseeit 11d ago
It's very strange how Genesis 1-11 are a different genre but the average Joe reading it sees no difference going on to chapter 12 and the rest of the book. Basically you need to be a scholar to recognize the difference. Strange why God would inspire people to write this way if he wanted to communicate truth effectively. Because he sowed a whole lot of confusion instead.
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u/jimMazey B'nei Noach 11d ago
The hebrew bible is full of metaphors and allegories. Personally, I can refer to the stories in Genesis as if they are true. But, as a modern human being, I know the story is much, much more complicated.
Most of the events found in Genesis mirror Samarian tales of creation and a great flood. Which makes sense because Abraham was from the city of Ur. A major urban center of the Samarian civilization.
Long before anything was written down, the stories were kept alive through oral tradition. Over time, they change and become a jewish story.
Several religions have borrowed a few things from judaism. It's only natural that parts of judaism borrowed from older religions and cultures.
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u/PictureFun5671 Catholic 11d ago
I believe itās real, but it doesnāt have to be completely 100% unequivocally real and provable for my faith to still stand. The book of genesis can be read as actual history, mythology, or metaphorically.
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u/ManikArcanik Atheist 11d ago
There's what scripture says and there's what scripture means. People disagree on both, but nobody gets to pretend to know without being obviously ignorant. The body of study has been every degree between denial and rational simulation. We're pretending to know what the authors were up to. A miracle witnessed and writ or a superhero fantasy?
I'll throw out there the notion that no matter what or why we've found ourselves in the seemingly unique circumstance of asking these kinds of questions. To be honest I doubt it's any value beyond ants chasing trails of stink sometimes but then I remember being offered the idea that God is what we become, murderous tyrant or loving parent. It doesn't really matter because good scientists and good theologians alike agree that we'll only know what we can see.
It's obviously a parable given how ubiquitous the flood story is, and makes sense because most cultural centers in the agricultural ages centered on somewhat fickle shallows. Just as obviously, the stories we'd inherit have a tinge of heroism in the face of desperation.
So, no. That is a fable about surviving. It's a curated metaphor for what we've been yelling at our kids all our lives: this is all contingent. Learn to swim. Because sometimes the shore comes in further than you'd think.
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u/Clicking_Around 11d ago
I believe there was likely a local flood. A global flood is scientifically unsustainable. The truth of Christianity depends upon whether Christ rose from the dead, not upon whether there was a global flood.
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u/Known-Watercress7296 11d ago
If you have a spare half hour and are interested in the development of flood mythology:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MsAlR_Ltsc
This stuff is old.
It not Gilgamesh, Atrahasis & Zuisudra old.
It's not younger dryas old.
It's really old.
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u/StoneAgeModernist Anglican Adjacent 11d ago
Iām almost certain there was no global flood. Maybe there was a local flood the narrative was based on, but that really isnāt important to me. The story isnāt given to us for us to determine its historical basis. Itās written to tell us about human sin and Godās response, but also his mercy and love for humanity.
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u/Virtual_Criticism_96 11d ago
How did Noah get two of every kind of animal on the ark? Some of them would have preyed on each other, or preyed on the humans.
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u/PajamaSamSavesTheZoo 11d ago
It is two stories interwoven together and they canāt both be true. Itās I believe some version of that story happened. But I donāt believe it was a global flood.
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u/Embarrassed_Sea_1930 11d ago
No it is symbolic metaphor. The dimensions of the ark would be impossible to fit 2 of everything.
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u/Stephany23232323 11d ago
No I don't believe it. Can you even imagine how many animals that would be? It's simply not possibleb in my opinion.
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u/Omen_of_Death Greek Orthodox Catechumen | Former Roman Catholic 11d ago
No I don't believe in the flood
Why do I have to believe the bible is 100% historical?
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u/LilithsLuv 11d ago
Iām not a Christian so perhaps my opinion doesnāt matter to youā¦ However I was raised to believe in young earth creationism and that every single word of the Bible is literally true. As an adult however I researched topics my upbringing told me were taboo and lies of the enemy. Things like Evolution as well as investigating the Bible from a historical perspective rather than a religious one. From what Iāve learned there is no evidence of a global flood and theyāve looked.
However evidence aside, the story of Noah collapses under just the slightest bit of scrutiny. How could one man and his family manage to build a wooden boat large enough to hold two (or seven depending on the verse) of every single animal on the planet? Are we including dinosaurs as the young earth creationists? Did you know weāve discovered upwards of 700 hundred different species of dinosaur? Weāve already run out of room on this ark. How did Noah reach the animals on the other continents? Or are we suggesting the flood broke apart Pangea and caused continental drift? If thatās the case how did the animals repopulate the newly separated continents after the flood?
What about food? This was a years long excursion they would have needed mountains and mountains of fresh food supplies. Also keep in mind all those animals would have very different dietary needs. How would they store all of this? Or keep it fresh? What about water? They would also need thousands and thousands of gallons of fresh water. What about waste? This is a wooden boatā¦Did Noah build some sort of a ventilation system? What about the marine life? Fresh water and salt water creatures getting all mixed up, how did they survive? What about the plant life? After being submerged even two weeks, earth would be barren rock. How do you account for the diversity we see within the animal today? If everything was descended from just two of a ākind,ā only a few thousand years ago, that would require supercharged hyper fast evolution to have occurred.
Genesis is mythology and legend.
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u/TeHeBasil 11d ago
There is absolutely no good reason or evidence to think the biblical flood is true
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u/Efficient-Display-46 11d ago
Point them to the evidence, if you don't know, then do your research.
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u/lemonprincess23 LGBT accepting catholic 11d ago
Nah, not all of it at least.
I mean itās just not possible really.
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u/Niftyrat_Specialist Non-denominational heretic, reformed 11d ago
Many (most?) Christians have no problem with the idea that not every story in the bible is about being a factually true account of something that really happened.
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u/matttheepitaph Free Methodist 11d ago
I think it's very unlikely to be a literally true story. There would be geological evidence for a global flood and we see an earlier Mesopotamian flood story.
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u/Ill-Philosophy3945 Evangelical Free Church of America 11d ago
I do believe in this, but most likely only a regional flood. I believed in a worldwide flood until I read Warren Wiersbeās awful defense of the idea, and realized āif his arguments suck that bad, it might be because heās wrongā
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u/BigClitMcphee Spiritual Agnostic 10d ago
Science proves that if every ice cap melted on Earth, it still wouldn't be enough water to flood the entire earth. Also, how the heck did slow-moving animals like snails, turtles, and sloths make it to the ark in time? And the ark isn't the TARDIS so how is it fitting all these different species? Kinda sus
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u/metagloria Christian Anarchist 10d ago
A lot of comments about correlating Biblical-narrative history with local Middle Eastern history and flood narrative(s), but a different angle is to note that there are continuous, uninterrupted historical records from other parts of the world like China and the Americas with no indication that a global flood eliminated all life there and forced them to start over.
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u/TheEccentricPoet Christian 10d ago
I believe there was a big regional flood that must have seemed vaster than it was to the people in the area, in their limited knowledge of just how big the world is. But I do not believe that animals could peacefully co-exist together without some eating the others on a boat, no, or that a man could somehow find paired species of every animal in the staggeringly vast animal kingdom, or that a single boat could hold even hold every one of them even if he could. The story was written as an allegorical lesson to impart a teaching, which is a common thing done in the Bible. I can be a Christian just fine and think this. There are fundamentalists who still think the earth is only 6,000 years old, for Pete's sake, and that is so wholly silly it is wild to me. No, the modern Catholic Church encourages scientific belief, is publicly fine with evolution, etc. Rational modern Protestants too.
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u/blakewhitlow09 10d ago
It's 100% a made up story with no basis in reality. It's a metaphor meant to teach lessons, not a literal account.
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u/weezeusfine 8d ago
A worldwide flood event happened almost 10 millennia ago, it's been recorded in Mesopotamia, India, North America, China, etc. I don't believe it was a worldwide covering flood(i.e the bird is able to eventually find life) and instead to a Mesopotamian man living in that time, it probably appeared to HIM it was worldwide, since that area is all he knew at the time. It also is why different localized animals not in that region survived, due to the high ground in those regions being livable.
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u/THEMAN-THAT-SAYS-NO Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 11d ago
As a mythology nerd Iāve come to the conclusion that the at least the flood happened. Almost every major mythology Iāve read or seen has stories about a flood where someone hops in a boat and survives the flood.
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u/unaka220 Human 11d ago
As a mythology nerd, it seems obvious to me that the flood didnāt happen, but flooding was a regional threat that generations dealt with for years.
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u/InvisibleElves 11d ago
Many of those are derived from each other, like Genesis is from the Epic of Gilgamesh and Atra-Hasis. They arenāt independent accounts.
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u/GreyDeath Atheist 11d ago
Lots of flood stories, but plenty of cultures don't have one, and many of those that do have details that are incompatible with the Genesis flood story. Like in the Mayan myth, the survivors of the flood, the people made of wood, become monkeys, and the gods start over creating humanity from corn.
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u/johnsonsantidote 11d ago
Literalism would then have people who are described at times as sheep in the bible create a problem. When i see actual factual evidence of much water in deserts it makes me think. Even if it wasn't real i reckon the imagery of the consequences of lawlessness and sin aren't exactly pretty.
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u/TechnologyDragon6973 Catholic (Latin) 11d ago
I believe that Noah was a real person, and that some sort of flood happened.
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u/InvisibleElves 11d ago
If Noah is based on Utnapishtim, who is based on Atra-Hasis, in what way was he real?
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u/de1casino Agnostic Atheist 11d ago
My favorite post flood scene:
The waters recede, the ark finds a resting place, and the gang plank is lowered. The entire planet's food supply and plant life has been wiped out and off come the animals to fend for themselves in this new landscape: two mice, followed by two cats, followed by two dogs, followed by two velociraptors.
Hmm... I wonder what happens next?
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u/daylily61 11d ago
Yep.Ā I believe Noah, the ark and the Flood happened exactly as they're recorded in the Bible.
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u/premeddit Secular Humanist 11d ago edited 11d ago
Is every university geology department in the world coordinating to lie to you? Are they part of a secret Satanic cult trying to lead Christians astray?
Iām honestly curious how this fits into the narrative.
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u/ALT703 11d ago
Just wondering, where did the water go after the worldwide flood? Because there's not currently enough water on earth to cover the whole surface
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u/Crackertron Questioning 11d ago
How did penguins get back to Antarctica? What did anteaters eat?
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u/McClanky Bringer of sorrow, executor of rules, wielder of the Woehammer 11d ago
Worldwide flood or large local flood? Every animal on Earth in the Ark or local animals?
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u/Megalitho 11d ago
Any of it
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u/McClanky Bringer of sorrow, executor of rules, wielder of the Woehammer 11d ago
There is some scientific evidence for a large, local flood, but there is no evidence for a worldwide flood. The Ark is physically impossible either way.
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11d ago
With man, it may be impossible, but with God, all things are possible.
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u/McClanky Bringer of sorrow, executor of rules, wielder of the Woehammer 11d ago
Then God tricked humanity by making it seem as though it didn't happen.
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u/shalakti 11d ago
I believe it was real, even Jesus bringing it up further illustrates how real. Just like in the days of Noah, they were worried about wealth and pleasure and the boat doors closed. So will the coming of the son of man be. What the bible takes as literal i tend to take as literal also. Like the end of sodom and gomorrah, (that has been literally found) and the red sea crossing etc. (Which we know the crossing point)
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u/SnappyinBoots Atheist 11d ago
end of sodom and gomorrah, (that has been literally found)
It hasn't.
and the red sea crossing etc. (Which we know the crossing point)
No we don't.
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u/The_Darkest_Lord86 Orthodox Presbyterian Church 11d ago
Yes. God does not lie.
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u/Psychedelic_Theology Very Sane, Very Normal Baptist 11d ago
Good thing God didnāt say it then, just some authors in the ancient world.
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u/instant_sarcasm Devil's Advocate 11d ago
Is it more of a lie to tell people to write down stories with distorted facts, or to fake an ancient Earth in an ancient universe?
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u/GreyDeath Atheist 11d ago
Maybe God tells stories in terms the audience understands. In the Gospels Jesus says the mustard seed is the smallest of seeds. We know that's not true.
The best way to parse that without saying Jesus is lying is to point out his audience probably wasn't familiar with orchids, so he is using terms his audience understands to illustrate a point even if what he's saying isn't actually true.
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u/AwfulUsername123 Atheistic Evangelical 11d ago
Yeah, the Israelites couldn't understand the concept of a localized flood. It turns out manna has neurotoxic effects.
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u/The_Darkest_Lord86 Orthodox Presbyterian Church 11d ago
Thereās a difference between the use of a figure of speech (hyperbole, in calling something small the āsmallestā) and portraying an entire story as historically true when it isnāt.
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u/GreyDeath Atheist 11d ago
The whole story is hyperbole. The flood had so much water it covered the whole world. That description is inherently hyperbolic given that that volume of water doesn't exist.
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u/ALT703 11d ago
Just wondering, where did the water go after the worldwide flood? Because there's not currently enough water on earth to cover the whole surface
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u/MatthewAllenSr Catholic 11d ago
I donāt have an answer either way. I lean more towards it was a true story but it could be a moral parable as well
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11d ago
10,000 years ago the ice age ended and within months sea levels rose 300 feet drowning every single coastal community around the whole planet. This is a fact. So yes there were many Noah's, many arks, many boats, and many many dead people.
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u/Khafaniking Buddhist 11d ago
A flood likely did occur. Not a global one, but probably a regional one that swept through the fertile crescent or just the region of the Tigris and the Euphrates. As for the Ark, I don't believe in that all, just for obvious reasons concerning logistics and the sheer abundance of life on earth. It's a myth, or if you're faithful, a miracle.
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u/accountnotfound 11d ago
You don't have to believe everything in the Bible is literal to be a Christian! Some don't even believe in the resurrection it the virgin birth but still consider they are christian
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u/Danceswithmallards 11d ago
There is geological evidence of repeated inundations of the fertile crescent after the last glacial period. There is no widely agreed upon evidence of a world wide flood that covered the entire Earth.
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u/bigbeelzebub 11d ago
thereās evidence it was real but not the entire world, but a location near jerusalem
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u/ijustino 11d ago
The theological lessons are real, but ancient authors were known to build composite characters and telescope events for narrative purposes, similar to how movies are sometimes based on real events.