Was the Noah flood real ? Did Noah put all living things in his boat?

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Mike_from_NJ said:
How would you square a regional flood that would only kill some people with a God that wants to wipe out all of humanity?
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Have you asked the Church that?? You seem to be trying to impose your view that there was definitely a global flood when the Church does not teach that at all!! I think I will listen to the Church who says I am free to believe whatever I want regarding the flood.
 
John10 said:
As I said before the Church has not ruled out a global flooding so we are free to believe that.
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You are also free to believe that the earth is a flat disk with a hard dome over it to hold the waters of heaven in place, and that snow and hail are stored in big rooms in the sky for angels to throw down to earth during storms (all things also found in the Bible). Why would you choose to believe such unscientific things, when there is no theological reason to do so?
 
The HowStuffWorks does mention

“The scientific community doesn’t wholly doubt the possibility of a great flood, but it has yet to answer the questions of where and when it might have happened.”

And provides possible theories to approach this, so I do not consider it weak.

Christian Answers provides common sense arguments from reading the Bible, adding to all of this is of course fact that the Church does allow us to believe in it.

Overall I would say it is reasonable to do so. And I do agree with you however that understanding all of Genesis literally is not the right way to approach it. In that I do disagree with Answers in Genesis or other Christian sites which might be doing the same thing.
 
John10 said:
so I do not consider it weak.
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I meant weak in the sense that it is all fluff and possibilities without any real solid evidence either way. And again, if you are using the Bible as your evidence, then use the Bible and own that position. If you bring science into it, follow the science properly keeping in mind that the Bible is not a science textbook.
 
I’ve presented articles that allow the possibility of a global flood, but have not seen any from you that can dismiss what I have presented. HowTheStuff works is not biased and they are also suggesting the possibilities of a global flood.

I know the Bible is not a science book, however that does not mean that the flood was not global, if at all the Bible would seem to suggest a massive flooding catastrophe, which most likely was global and killed most living things.

The Bible itself gives various reasons to believe so which are documented in the sites I’ve presented. So this is not only my opinion.
 
John10 said:
but have not seen any from you
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You seem to be laboring under the illusion that I care whether you believe the science or not and that I am trying to convince you. All I am doing is stating my position that the sites you claim show solid evidence for a global flood actually don’t. Whether you believe me or not is immaterial to me; whether you believe in a global flood exactly as described in the Bible is immaterial to me.
 
vz71 said:
Maybe.
When you start messing around with salinity of the water, most species may end up dying off.
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salinity, oxygen levels, turbidity, light levels, disruption of the food chain, water level changes disrupting the living conditions of the shallow water fish, fresh water fish and fish that like living in a mixture of both, and in turbid water.
 
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Mike_from_NJ said:
For anyone who is saying it was local flood, the story in the Bible said that God regretted creating man and was going to wipe them out (apart from Noah’s crew) and start again. It wouldn’t make sense for God to flood only a small portion of the world leaving numerous humans alive.
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No one goes to the cancer doctor and says only remove a portion of the tumor.
 
on_the_hill said:
Well, to be honest, men have been building boats for thousands of years. Just because Ham’s didn’t work doesn’t mean that ancient mariners’ couldn’t.
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If one wants a wood ship to be watertight the deck must be swabbed.
 
buffalo said:
No one goes to the cancer doctor and says only remove a portion of the tumor.
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Actually they do. Especially with things like brain cancers. The reasons for this are because only part of the tumour is accessible, or removing that part of the tumour will prevent some of the side effects of having it growing in that particular area.
 
Mike_from_NJ said:
The thing I’m focusing on is if this is the case then the story is riddled with false elements, which can cause problems for believers.
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Or it’s an inspired “based on a true story” that is not intended for scientific precision.
 
GiftofMercy said:
Actually they do. Especially with things like brain cancers. The reasons for this are because only part of the tumour is accessible, or removing that part of the tumour will prevent some of the side effects of having it growing in that particular area.
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That is due to circumstances.
 
I’m no scientist or biblical scholar either. But it seems to me all the arguments make some assumptions that are usually unspoken. The major one has to do with time. There is an assumption that the flood happened a few thousand years ago, whatever it might have been, and that it occurred within those conditions we understand prevailed then. We don’t know that. We are assured nowadays that the human race is perhaps 200,000 years old, up from earlier guesstimates. But we don’t actually know that it isn’t a lot older than that. We don’t know what the conditions of the world were at the time. To get really far out, we don’t even know that it happened on this planet.

I don’t doubt there are scientific thinkers who have arguments that it had to be X number of years or none. But then, scientists in the 19th Century criticized the creation story because light couldn’t have predated the sun. Of course, we now know that it not only could, but did. We also know creation of the universe we know was sudden, but took billions of years to reformulate itself to what we now see. The creation story doesn’t tell us what a “day” was always, and certainly not before the existence of time.

But it’s the nature of humans to question things, so I’ll not belabor it any further.
 
Mike_from_NJ said:
The thing I’m focusing on is if this is the case then the story is riddled with false elements, which can cause problems for believers.
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The message of the Bible can be inerrant without every fact being literally correct.
Mike_from_NJ said:
How would you square a regional flood that would only kill some people with a God that wants to wipe out all of humanity?
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The flood occurs relatively early in human history. It’s possible that all rational homosapiens still lived in the same region and a local flood could take them out.
TMC said:
You are also free to believe that the earth is a flat disk with a hard dome over it to hold the waters of heaven in place, and that snow and hail are stored in big rooms in the sky for angels to throw down to earth during storms (all things also found in the Bible). Why would you choose to believe such unscientific things, when there is no theological reason to do so?
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Exactly. Science is just a portal to understanding our world. It’s revealed wonderful truths. If it says there’s no evidence for a global flood, that’s a good reason to ask ourselves why we believe there was a global flood. The plain modern english reading of Genesis suggests a global flood, but is that really what’s being communicated? Maybe not. Given what science tells us there’s strong reason to doubt. Especially since there is no theological reason to believe in a global flood.
 
Pretty much. There may be a statement or two I could get nit picky about.
 
  1. Yes.
  2. No.
  3. Maybe.
We are intended to focus on the lessons in faith and morals that it teaches.

There is absolutely no evidence that any of the persons mentioned in any of our Lord’s parables actually existed, or that the situations were factual. The lessons which the parables contained regarding faith and morals were 100% correct.
 
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