Was the flood an act of genocide?

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loozcannon

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The answer you seek can be found in “The Antiquities of the Jews” by Josephus; in Book 1, Capter3, Section 8. After Noah made a prayer he was given enlightenment from God that answers this. God said it was not he that brought destruction, but the evil brought it on themselves; and that they offended his holiness. Get a hold of a copy and read that section, it is very interesting. Perhaps they had some sort of war that triggered something geologic, along with provoking God’s wrath?

hendrickson.com/html/product/73868.trade.html?&category=all
 
I love your “if you design and build” argument.

Because it is a horrible argument!

Keep on with the crazy!
 
loozcannon said:
So, I was on good old Facebook, when an atheist friend of mine who I know from my military days, shared this picture:

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=2306&pictureid=15654

So, in response, I posted this. The first and third lines are me, the middle line, his:

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=2306&pictureid=15655

How other than that, I’m not really sure if that answered it well enough. How’d I do? Any tips/pointers/answers? 🙂
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It’s a philosophically shallow meme that will incite “huzahs” from certain secular people but won’t do much more than that.

This can be a difficult thing to digest for a person that has been brainwashed by contemporary postmodernism, but the reality is that every single soul that dies every second of every day of every year is dying because God permits it and/or wills it. So if you want to incite God as a killer, the flood story is really less than a drop in a bucket. He is our supreme Creator, Judge, and Sovereign. He cannot commit genocide because every single person belongs to him, mind, body, and soul. Your life is not yours to keep and you have absolutely no business whatsoever to protest that basic truth.

Now, in a declining Western society, if you put it that bluntly on Facebook, the point will probably go right over some people’s heads and they’ll be offended by it, insolent of them though that may be of them. Since Facebook is often such a weak platform for discussing theology, I’m not sure how you might approach it to be honest. You could just give them the straight-up answer, but be prepared to take heat.
 
TK421 said:
It’s a philosophically shallow meme that will incite “huzahs” from certain secular people but won’t do much more than that.

This can be a difficult thing to digest for a person that has been brainwashed by contemporary postmodernism, but the reality is that every single soul that dies every second of every day of every year is dying because God permits it and/or wills it. So if you want to incite God as a killer, the flood story is less than a drop in a bucket. He is our supreme Creator, Judge, and Sovereign. He cannot commit genocide because every single person belongs to him, mind, body, and soul. Your life is not yours to keep and you have absolutely no business whatsoever to protest that basic truth.

Now, in a declining Western society, if you put it that bluntly on Facebook, the point will probably go right over some people’s heads and they’ll be offended by it, insolent and narrow-minded of them though that may be of them. Since Facebook is often such a weak platform for discussing theology and many people aren’t receptive to begin with, I’m not sure how you might approach it to be honest.
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Your problem becomes trying to pretend you can wave science away with your beielf system.
 
Of course not. God is the Creator there is no law above him that he has to obey. He is Holy and in his holiness our reason rests our faith and understands his actions.
Jesus didn’t change anything in the Bible as we know it, so there is no need to look up for any extra resources.
Usually atheists fall into 2 very contradictory judgements: while they see Noah flood as a genocide, they also comment why God allows Hell and let those people tortured instead of simply destroying them…
Whitout the flood, the generations to come would have been more and more sinful, children would have been educated in sin and also would have suffered the consequences of those sins, torturing each other. Like Sodom, it was mercy for the generations to come.
 
Ion said:
Of course not. God is the Creator there is no law above him that he has to obey.
Jesus didn’t change anything in the Bible as we know it, so there is no need to look up for any extra resources.
Usually atheists fall into 2 very contradictory judgements: while they see Noah flood as a genocide, they also comment why God allows Hell and let those people tortured instead of simply destroying them…
Whitout the flood, the generations to come would have been more and more sinful, children would have been educated in sin and also would have suffered the consequences of those sins, torturing each other. Like Sodom, it was mercy for the generations to come.
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Is this Carm or is this Catholic Answers forum?
Ion,
Let’s reason together.
Your argument is justfying the theist claim that all human and animal and plant life basically started right back up again (from a claim that there was a literal Adam and Eve)
Stop me if you need to.
 
StrawberryJam said:
Your problem becomes trying to pretend you can wave science away with your beielf system.
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I agree.

We’re Catholic, not Evangelical Protestants.

Don’t fall for the either/or trick - the one that states that either God is all powerful and therefore allows evil (and is therefore guilty of evil), or he is not all powerful, and therefore not much of a God.

God Is all powerful and Evil happens.

Read this: “The Problem of Evil” by Peter Kreeft.

peterkreeft.com/topics/evil.htm
When Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote his great Summa Theologica, he could find only two objections to the existence of God, even though he tried to list at least three objections to every one of the thousands of theses he tried to prove in that great work. One of the two objections is the apparent ability of natural science to explain everything in our experience without God; and the other is the problem of evil.
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The problem can be stated very simply: If God is so good, why is his world so bad? If an all-good, all-wise, all-loving, all-just, and all-powerful God is running the show, why does he seem to be doing such a miserable job of it? Why do bad things happen to good people?
The unbeliever who asks that question is usually feeling resentment toward and rebellion against God, not just lacking evidence for his existence. C. S. Lewis recalls that as an atheist he “did not believe God existed. I was also very angry with him for not existing. I was also angry with him for having created the world.”
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Read more in the article.
 
StrawberryJam said:
Is this Carm or is this Catholic Answers forum?
Ion,
Let’s reason together.
Your argument is justfying the theist claim that all human and animal and plant life basically started right back up again (from a claim that there was a literal Adam and Eve)
Stop me if you need to.
Click to expand...
You see, when Galileo was condemned allmost all the scientific world was against Galileo; Galileo made a living working in a university sponsored by the church; the condemnation was very very light as Galileo was too old to travel to some other town, but hurting his feelings as a catholic. But always the atehist banner says “The church is against science, look what happened to Galileo”
Why would the church be involved again in such a dispute like e. theory? Scientists change their theories all the time, they are so happy for a new revolutionary discovery…and forget they believed the previous theory. I do believe Adam and Eve were the very first two human persons on Earth. I do believe Noah’s story really happened as it is written in the Bible. I do believe scientists are far away from knowing this world.
 
Ion said:
You see, when Galileo was condemned allmost all the scientific world was against Galileo; Galileo made a living working in a university sponsored by the church; the condemnation was very very light as Galileo was too old to travel to some other town, but hurting his feelings as a catholic. But always the atehist banner says “The church is against science, look what happened to Galileo”
Why would the church be involved again in such a dispute like e. theory? Scientists change their theories all the time, they are so happy for a new revolutionary discovery…and forget they believed the previous theory. I do believe Adam and Eve were the very first two human persons on Earth. I do believe Noah’s story really happened as it is written in the Bible. I do believe scientists are far away from knowing this world.
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Not so. Do you know who Copernicus is?
 
From what I understand even in Catholicism it’s not clear whether the flood story is metaphorical or literal. I usually see genocide reserved to be used as a word to describe the wide spread killing of a specific group (ethnic, national, racial, religious, …). In the flood story the destruction of an overwhelming majority of land creatures doesn’t sound very targeted. So it doesn’t sound like it was technically genocide. But it would still be a form of killing.

Moving away from semantic disagreements for a moment, ask yourself what is there to gain from engaging the group that posted the picture. Is this a battle worth fighting? You’ll find no shortage of disagreements on the Internet about any matter. So you may find it necessary to be selective about which ones you engage and which ones you ignore. I speculate this may be a battle for which there is nothing to gain.
 
Blaming God for a natural disaster (flood, earthquake, hurricane) is ridiculous. Only in case of a meteor or a comet or something external striking the earth would I suspect a hand of God.

In case of natural catastrophes, they could very well be the fault of men (like a flood caused by a dam built incorrectly or in the wrong place or an earthquake caused by nuclear testing) or just the consequence of natural cycles. I don’t believe God interferes in natural occurrences on the planet one way or the other (if he did, it would probably be to mitigate harmful actions by humans)…
 
Genesis 6:17 “Behold I will bring the waters of a great flood upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, under heaven. All things that are in the earth shall be consumed.” Destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. Not, destroy all flesh. The ark was a means to preserve flesh, at the behest of Noah who found favor. The Sons of God breeding with the Daughters of Man produced a wickedness that had to be remedied; the same wickedness produced when Cain married and produced a line that begat monsters like Lamech.
 
StrawberryJam said:
Your problem becomes trying to pretend you can wave science away with your beielf system.
Click to expand...
Is science a belief system? If not, why can’t it be waved away? Who cares what science means? Write down how you made my toaster and find a way to make it better.

If you think that science can’t be waved away because it is a belief system, it’s a pretty limited belief system. We’re about 9 billion more answers away from removing our feelings of uncertainty or dread. When do the scientists expect to finish that job?
 
Don’t respond to those kind of memes. They hope you will respond so that it will spread further to more people. And the others it will spread to most likely won’t even see your comment. They will only see the meme. So don’t respond to these. They are nothing but trolling.
 
The_Serpent said:
God said it was not he that brought destruction, but the evil brought it on themselves; and that they offended his holiness.
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Unfortunately, that comes off alaringly similar to what an abuser says to someone he or she is abusing.
 
StrawberryJam said:
I love your “if you design and build” argument.

Because it is a horrible argument!

Keep on with the crazy!
Click to expand...
And you lack tact, sir/madam. This is Catholic forum after all, and I’m sure the other 99.99% of people can see where I was going with that.

For us, there IS a God and He DOES exist, truly. No doubts amongst us.
 
TK421 said:
It’s a philosophically shallow meme that will incite “huzahs” from certain secular people but won’t do much more than that.

This can be a difficult thing to digest for a person that has been brainwashed by contemporary postmodernism, but the reality is that every single soul that dies every second of every day of every year is dying because God permits it and/or wills it. So if you want to incite God as a killer, the flood story is really less than a drop in a bucket. He is our supreme Creator, Judge, and Sovereign. He cannot commit genocide because every single person belongs to him, mind, body, and soul. Your life is not yours to keep and you have absolutely no business whatsoever to protest that basic truth.

Now, in a declining Western society, if you put it that bluntly on Facebook, the point will probably go right over some people’s heads and they’ll be offended by it, insolent of them though that may be of them. Since Facebook is often such a weak platform for discussing theology, I’m not sure how you might approach it to be honest. You could just give them the straight-up answer, but be prepared to take heat.
Click to expand...
Great point! I was thinking something along those lines as well, that and a common mistake of trying to think God is limited by our own preconceived notions.
 
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