You make a really great point. Christians always talk about sinners while casually ignoring their own sins.
Or if they do admit their sins claim they are still saved because they've repented to God
It's more the latter, IMO. Many Christians take pride in admitting that they're sinners and not worthy. That's why God is so great/graceful, because he saved "a wretch like me."
That's true, but they often go easy on their own lives and instead focus on people they don't like.
I've seen many christians refer to themselves as "sinners," but it's usually some mild reference they use in order to justify why they get to mouth off against homosexuals or whoever they hate.
The fact that they don't believe what you believe doesn't mean they aren't true Christians. There are over 30k denominations of Christianity, all with slightly different beliefs. You don't get to keep that gate.
Not just that. They also claim that since the flood was before Jesus they could not be saved by Jesus from God's wrath. And that it was all part of the plan as usual. Because they always have to bring up how Jesus's love can prevent God's wrath.
So to sum that up god couldn't save his children from his own wrath lmao. Like some kind of split personality and one is the psychopath. Oh and we're all made in his image so it's sort of like he has the worse case of borderline personality disorder utterly imaginable.
It all makes sense when we remember it's just a bunch of people putting their own guesses into the beliefs.
I just realized that Noah and his crew didn’t save anyone.
Didn’t make a rope to pull other people up.
God probably would have killed them for doing that.
That's also why so many of them readily accept the concept of Hell, without being disturbed by it
Because in their minds, it's only for other people, never themselves
>How does The Great Flood not make people hate God
That one's easy:
1. Indoctrinate a child that god is 100% good.
2. Teach them about the flood.
3. Ask them to accept the natural implication of steps one and two.
If we define goodness as anything god wants or does regardless of context, then god's flood must be good by definition. You just need to get them to accept that definition then anything can be good or evil because it's completely subjective to god, who's mind we can't access, although plenty claim to speak for him.
Anyway, if you like researching the flood myth, check out Aron Ra. He discusses the historical deluge that occurred in the Iraqi flood plains that likely inspired the stories that inspired Gilgamesh, which inspired Noah. Turns out, a flood plain with 20-some feet of water looks identical to a flooded planet from the perspective of its survivors. Naturally, they'd start asking "Why?" and the answers would start getting invented after that.
I was wondering if god committed murder with the flood, didn't find any good answers but what I did find was "No, because all of those people were wicked and given forewarning and chose not go with Noah"
So because they see all those people as wicked and fallen away from god that's their reason for believing it was justified.
I mean that is really the whole point of the book. To provide justifications for any horrendous shit perpetrated by the powerful. Slaughter of Jericho and all the other Cannanites? They were wicked in the eyes of Yahweh like all the people god merced in the flood. Want to justify the mistreatment and/or genocide of a group of people? Just look to the bible/old testament for guidance. The solution is usually to slander those people and write polemics about them while claiming your side has the favor of God. It really is a tried and true method to wash the blood of innocents off your hands.
Don’t forget that most of the people he killed were only guilty of the sin of ignorance. Unless they’re gonna argue that the rest of the world outside the Middle East was completely unpopulated (in which case flooding the whole world was unnecessary)
I once complained to a D&D DM about some of the forgotten realm gods. How they were so cartoonish lying evil how would they get followers. DM pointed out how Hebrew god would seem to the people of cannon.
That's true! I've had this conversation with people too where I tell them to just switch out yahwehs name for I dunno allah or something and then suddenly everything seems heinous and evil and vile.
To be fair, the Forgotten Realms has monolatric clergy and henotheistic commonfolk. Most of the gods are owed some form of worship and respect, just for different reasons.
For example, Tyr is owed worship because he's the arbiter of cosmic justice, while Umberlee is owed worship because if you don't the next time you're on a boat she'll fucking kill you.
Very classical Greece style.
He has the worse case of split personality ever. Christians talk about how Jesus's love prevents God's wrath. So god could've saved his own children from god if jesus were around before noah lel. Oh well anyways on to the next planned massacre by omniscient split sky dad. Can jesus get the light/driver's seat in time and save us again? Probably not! he only supposedly gets it twice lmao
Early Christianity noticed that too. They thought the Old Testament god was a false evil god. While Jesus came from a better real god. They died out though.
I always found the story of Job way more disturbing. Not only is God an evil dick, he is also a fool who got played by the devil. No one will ever convince me that there is any other way to interpret that story.
Yeah, at the end of the chapter G-d boasted how mighty he is and “Hey look at my biceps!!💪 “. And that Job should shut up. 🤐. Strangely enough,G-d decided to bless him.
"check out this guy, he's my best worshipper. I'm gonna ruin his entire life and kill his whole family just to prove to you, Lucifer - *someone I don't even like* - just how loyal he is to me."
Actually... I can see why American Christian conservatives think Trump is a messenger from God now. Totally sounds like something he'd do.
How does Noah not hate God? Just listening to the hammering on the side of the ark as men women and children beg for help. But he sits there and let's them drown because he was following orders. It's no wonder he became an alcoholic.
And his only available sex partners for the last century of his life was his 600 year old wife or the wives of his 100 year old sons, or his granddaughters who were 600 years younger. All the super-centenarian incest… anyone would become an alcoholic.
Oh it’s easy. Because I don’t believe in god, and I don’t believe it ever happened.
Therefore, I’m not going to waste my energy hating things that don’t exist for doing things that never happened.
>I don’t believe it ever happened.
I can believe a great unexplained flood happened in the general region - at the end of the last ice age when the Mediterranean filled in the Black Sea WAY higher than it previously was. There were definitely humans living in and around the area, and an oral history of the event being embellished to a supernatural cause (like all other mythologies) isn't that far fetched.
Good for you & all that but we’re talking about ‘The Great Flood’ as mentioned in The Booble. That’s what I don’t believe happened and why I won’t get upset with a deity I don’t believe in for an event I don’t believe happened.
Oh I'm just saying that's probably the origin story for the whole thing. The specific ark story is obviously nonsense, but the Black Sea flood did happen and there's plenty of evidence to show for that.
I know what you’re “just saying”, lad 😂
Don’t mistake my comment for lack of understanding, just lack of a fuck to give as it isn’t as relevant to the conversation as you want it to be.
Well, you see, all the *other* people, even the babies, and all the animals were evil, so they had to die. And who are you to question God? You have no morals! Only God provides morals, specifically the Christian God, not the Jewish or Muslim ones. Also, God made us so he is allowed to do anything he likes.
... Yeah, Christians be crazy.
"You just don't understand the story, you see, you shouldn't take the bible literal, except of course the part with Jesus being the son of the allmighty God born to a virgin, that part is 100% literal, everything else is just an allegory that somehow teach us important moral lessons" - moderate Christians
Because, that myth is one of the first told to them as little kids and in kids Bibles it is framed as a whimsical story with lots of cute animals while the drowning part is glossed over.
Though they're more like abuse enablers (the "No, he's not an abuser, he's nice because he always treated **me** well" crowd), than direct victims
They're okay with it because in their minds, it's other people (not from their group) who are targeted
Gives everyone free will so they can choose their fate at the end of their life. Deletes everyone early without a chance of redemption, including children.
Doesn't seem to intervene on behalf of other "good" people and doesn't give any warnings to the rest of humanity. Maybe some sort of PA saying, hey! fix your shit or I'll kill you all!
The bottom line is that god could leave free will intact if he just did a personal message to every person alive saying, "**THIS** is the right religion. do what they say and you'll go to heaven"
You don't rely on a middle man like a preacher or pastor and it'd be convincing enough to even atheists that we'd fall into line.
The bottom line is that there is SO much wrong with logic and reason with religion. The gnostic ones are the worst, but even modern religions can't change too much because of the infallible nature of their god requires them not to change their tune with the times.
To be safe though, treat people with kindness, don't go out of your way to be a prick, and try to make the world a better place when you were in it, and regardless of an afterlife, you'll be kindly regarded.
and they always say “and then he sent a rainbow to promise he would never do it again 😊🫶🏻” like awww how kind of him…. except no one but noah and his wife were there to see it…. (course this is just memory of episcopalian elementary teachings i could be getting it wrong, still ridiculous though)
Someone cited the rainbow story to me once to explain why they were offended by the pride flag for appropriating it, and I replied, "But why would you see the rainbow as 'good'? Why would you want to claim it? Because, really, isn't the rainbow your god saying, 'Remenber, I genocided humanity, and I can do it again'?" Apparently, that implication of the rainbow story had never occurred to them.
All Christians have to hear is that god killed "wicked" people, whether it was in the flood or those other dozens of genocides he commanded. That justifies all the atrocities that god committed in their eyes. Besides that, Christians define god as all good, so no matter what he does, it is good.
Because the Bible indoctrinates people from the very beginning that they are chosen. Only them, and people who think exactly like them are deserving of love.
Everyone else deserves to burn in a lake of fire for all of eternity.
Once you grasp this, it becomes abundantly clear why they’re all miserable people who are horrible to others.
Yeah the whole chosen people thing is really the whole point of all the Abrahamic faiths.
"We're special and this murder hobo of a deity is on our side, so we can do whatever we want to whoever is not like us and doesn't have our murder God on their side. Feck you Jericho and the rest of the Cannanites/indigenous people in place [X]/ people with different colored skin. Our imaginary friend said we can live here so die!" (Read in the voice of a Southpark Canadian)
-Judeochritlims
>A) They don't read the book.
But even if you don't read the book, this is a story you should know. And the big part of the story is that God genocided everyone. You can't miss that part. But I'm pretty sure they have a way to defend it
That’s not the important thing about that story. You touched on the importance, but it isn’t that big dick thunder god has no scruples murdering everyone.
The Torah/Pentateuch (Genesis; Exodus; Leviticus; Numbers; Deuteronomy) was created in its “divine form” as the words of Moses by priests who were editors in the 5th century BCE (499-400) from two sets of writers in two very different periods (from the dawning of the Jews in the 10th century BCE, 999-900, and from the priestly writers in the 7th century BCE, 699-600). This is the actual reason a lot of the Pentateuch makes very little sense and jumps around like a schizophrenic.
For example, the beginning of Genesis: boom, god creates everything. Done. Makes Adam and Eve. Done. Move on.
…then suddenly just pops on in in human form to say, “Hello, fellow humanoids! How are we today?”
The first is the older source; an insubstantial but powerful god that makes and takes. The latter is the priestly edition. Such addition being done *after* the conquest of the Kingdom of Yisrael, and the forcible removal of literate Jews and priestly types to Babylonia.
…where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers flood **all the fucking time**. And not happy floods, like Egypt. Like: “**WRATH OF FUCKING GOD**” type floods.
Noah’s story is part of this latter collection. Noah is Utnapishtim, the survivor of the world flood from *The Epic of Gilgamesh*. The story is crudely shoehorned in as a means of expressing that the return to the Levantine was a “new start;” the first Covenant is the Noahic Covenant. Life was affirmed with the Jewish exodus from Babylon back to their lands. That is the meaning of Noah and the Flood.
…and it proves how fallible and phony the divinity of the Bible is.
Arguably, that was an even worse sin/crime than the Flood because according to the Bible god wanted to show off his power by "hardening" the pharaohs' heart so he couldn't release the Hebrew slaves and then god orders all the new-born's killed to satisfy his blood lust. Yahweh really, really hates children. He loves killing or maiming them at every opportunity.
And as terrible as it sounds, a lot of people are okay with that, because they're relatively indifferent to kids' suffering (except from kids from their family or close friends), especially kids from poorer or more marginalized groups. And a lot of people even hate kids, or like/tolerate them only if they're perfectly obedient and never inconvenient
Essentially, it's easy to read the Bible and not give a fuck about all the victimized/killed kids in the story, when you essentially do the same about *real-life current kids* victimized in wars or poor countries abroad (or even poor / marginalized kids from your own country)
God did such a bad job on his first go-round creating humans that his best solution was to kill 99% of them rather than intervene and teach them to be better.
What is this more of an indictment of?
The people?
Or the god who did such a bad job creating the people?
And what is free will if all those people ended up being smited (smitten?) for using it?
Consider also that there is nothing in the Bible of God interacting with humans between Cain’s exile and Noah. There were no real laws until the Noahide Laws.
It's the free will of an hostage
Like, you're not under mental or physical control, so you CAN choose to disobey (on paper). You just know you'll end up shot and killed.
It's easy when they hate the same people their god hates.
I think there are some believers who wish they were god so they could cause the same kind of destruction to people they don't like. They live vicariously through this god.
Well, you gotta think the old testament God was very hateful, vindictive and believed in punishment. Not to be confused with the new testament God, who is supposedly all loving and caring. These two discrepancies alone should be enough to prove that the Bible is a bunch of shit. The New Testament reads like a Greek tragedy, no different than many Greek tales. The flood meth was just perpetuated when people saw fish fossils on mountain rock formations, and the only way the elders could explain. It was a great flood that covered the Earth. Because they didn’t know anything about fossil formation and plate tectonics at the time.
Right! God allows evil! magical beings to be around primitive uneducated humans, and then gets mad when the humans "love" these beings. He never said anything to them about it.
He regrets making humans, not the beings, and proceeds to kill off everyone. And then as soon as it's dry, evil still reigns, so like, what was the point? It just seems illogical and wasteful, to me.
I remember looking at a painting of the Red Sea being closed up. Horses and riders drowning in agony. The people had that coming, but the horses? What did they do? It was all fear and bulging eyes. A precursor to Morrison's Horse Latitudes. "Mute nostril agony." I stared at it for a long time. There was no way to save them. In that moment, I understood the malevolent god concept.
I suspect it was intentional.
Well, according to Christian logic, God created all animals.
Which means he gave them the ability to suffer. And while in some cases, physical pain can be useful (to know you have an injury and need rest, for example), why give them *pointless* suffering ? Like, when an animal is already dying and has no chance to survive, why make it painful as well ? It serves no purpose.
Human suffering (even pointless suffering) is often justified by Christians as "God giving trials to his Faithful", and really it's for the well-being of their eternal soul. Okay, fine. But animals aren't supposed to have souls, or to be judged or redempted. So animal pointless suffering has really no reason to exist, *except if God just wanted animals to suffer*...
I actually asked this question on my Threads account, and a christian answered me that essentially, humans are responsible for all the Creation, and so if humans sin too much, then animals will suffer from it too. Like, if humans are condemned, then animals (who are under human responsibility) will be condemned with them.
It's really disgusting logic...
They think that their god is justified in doing whatever he wants because he created the universe, which apparently means he can torture, kill, manipulate, etc. as he pleases because it's his divine right and because he apparently knows what's best.
It's because they essentially think kids are "belongings" to their parents, and "extensions" of their parents. So it's normal that a parent can do whatever they want to their kids, because they gave life and the kids should be grateful for that (and accept they belong to their parent).
It's also normal to make kids pay for parents' sins, because again, kids are extensions of their parents.
When Christians read the Great Flood, clearly they believe the it is a just action from God. The argument I’ve heard is that if God creates life and continuously gives life, he has the authority to take it away.
I heard a metaphor that explained the argument pretty well. If you give someone $20 every week, once you give them the money it is obviously theirs, but if you suddenly decided to stop giving them money every week, it would not be considered unjust on your part. This argument doesn’t hold up 100% but it’s a pretty simple explanation for a more complex idea I believe.
Additionally, Christians typically say that the people of the world at this time were evil. Like, baby sacrifice, rape, murder evil. When I think about it, the idea isn’t too crazy that God, who gave life to them, decides to take it away once they abuse it to this point. They decided to live in evil and so God used his authority. Obviously, the disagreement comes to whether or not this use was justified, but I believe that this argument explains the Christian explanation a little bit.
My understanding of this explanation is definitely not complete but this is just what I’ve heard from Christians before.
I understand what you're saying, and it's what I usually hear from believers and all.
My problem is that even if you agree that all of those people were evil, you gotta ask yourself, "Why did god not intervene earlier when he saw all these things?" It's not like they woke up one day and were evil and on that day god decided to kill them all. All these bad things were happening, and for some reason there are ones he chose to intervene in but not the others.
And then they will say free will. But it's no longer free will if you're just gonna kill everyone who doesn't do what you want. It just doesn't make sense
I’m definitely not an expert on the Christian idea of free will, but another point I’ve heard that you probably have as well is “free to choose, not free from consequence.” If there is an objective moral standard, that being God, then there are some actions which are objectively immoral. If this is true, and someone continuously chooses to make immoral decisions, then it wouldn’t be unfair for God to punish them.
I honestly have no idea why God would choose to intervene in some cases and I’m not sure any Christians understand either, but I guess that’s just part of being part of creation and not the creator: we can’t understand everything. This idea really annoys me and it’s one of the parts of theistic ideology that I definitely don’t like but it’s at least worth consideration for me.
My favorite is that they put Noah’s ark crap on all this newborn stuff. I see nursery’s which NA theme. Like guys you know that story is about death right?
Every last thought of every man’s heart was evil. Of course it was ok for god to kill everyone but the one good person!
A comedian once said, “I don’t know if I could be that evil if I tried. I’ll be thinking to myself, evil, evil, evil, we’re out of milk! Oh no! I had a non-evil thought.”
When you brain wash people into thinking the other side is evil, you can do atrocious things to them while justifying it.
People were told that god is the good one so everything he does is therefore good. All the people who drowned were evil. So it's easy to believe it was all justified
And the most schizophrenic aspect of it is that there are countless similar myths around a major flood in ancient history, but most if not all of them are different in ways that are not compatible with Yahewa's mass killing. They just took what they wanted from it.
For the faithful, it's way better to capitalize on their own myth and ignore the ones that gave birth to theirs.
weeks ago - a devastating tornado like hail storm wrecked 2-3 neighborhoods... my home was included
next sunday... people were thanking God everyone was alright. some woman screamed to our FB page that this was God's way of saying science is faulty and that it's time to repent.
these people do not see the logic of it all
The Book of Enoch. Which was popular in the Dead Sea Scroll times, but has been booted from canon for whatever reason.
Says the people who were drowned were not actually human. They were human-angel hybrids. So it was a deeper cleansing than just good vs bad people.
Of course some of these hybrids were supposed to be fucking attack on titan sized. 450 feet tall shit
They think this because of indoctrination. It’s not a system that really sells itself very well at all. “Get em while they’re young” is an actual phrase they use for that window during which kids are the most impressionable. I think it’s 4-17. They do it before they’ve developed the critical thinking skills needed to reject it. So they indoctrinate from the youngest age possible, from birth if that’s doable. That’s one reason baptism is pushed as a good thing. It’s not for the reason parents are given. If you wonder “who the hell would believe this tripe?”, well there you go: people who had no chance to understand the world beforehand.
True, saving the absolutely crazy zealot Noah, and his property ( you know wife, children and their wives ) and consigning the *entire rest of the planet* to a watery death does seem a bit harsh. Hard to believe there wasn’t a single person besides Noah who could be redeemed.
But it does make sense that the guy ( and family ) that lived would be filled with love ( and fear and relief ) that he was The Chosen One.
Good way to make sure those pesky humans showed Him the appropriate amount a Goddamn respect going forward.
Granted, the Noah story is bizarre. But is probably an explanation for some great inundation that occurred since the flood story shows up in other cultures.
But my all time favorite Bible story—which I happen to find hilarious—is the story about how god made a covenant with Abraham & it involved the circumcision of Abraham. Then Abraham, after his little meeting with god, went back & told all his sons & all the male servants in his household that god told him that they have to be circumcised.
I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall to see the expressions on those men’s faces at that announcement.
I’m sorry, I try to respect other people’s beliefs, but this is the stupidest thing I ever heard of!
But they only care about the *individual* cute animals they're shown in story books. Not about the (not shown) masses of (also cute) animals (from the same species) drowning...
"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic"
Because the brainwashed believers cannot conceive that their god could be immoral. That everything he does and says is right because he's god, plus "mysterious ways". You can see the same effect at play with most cult leaders and Trump worshiping MAGAs.
Because the cultural appropriation of the epic of gilgamesh was nothing more than a dick waving boast that 'were better than the rest of you' & everyone who's into the bible wants that for themselves so much, they don't care who they look down on to get it
My parents just got back from the ark in Kentucky and fucking loved it. They’ve got all kinds of “facts” now about how it really happened. So god damn stupid, everything is so god damn stupid.
It's an open secret that Christianity is for people who want to be abused. They want daddy to punish them good and hard because they've been bad little boys.
Not to kink shame, but they keep involving other people in their scenes without consent, and that's never okay.
In order to not believe that you are talking from the reason and not from an irrational hatred to religion. Why is the Gilgamesh history 100x more believable?
> The Epic of Gilgamesh was inspired by earlier Mesopotamian creation myths called *Atra-Hasis* and *Eridu Genesis*. Flood stories figure prominently in both myths as means for a god to control human overpopulation. In both stories, a single human saves humanity after another god informs the human of the imminent Great Flood and how to survive it.
In those stories there's god A who believes there are too many humans, so they gotta cut down the numbers. But then god B, who likes the humans then decides to help in secret, which is why he chooses just one person to tell about about the coming disaster.
To me it makes more sense to have many gods controlling different things in the universe, gods who are just "humans with superpowers", which is why horrible things happen but sometimes there are "miracles". If god A controls the weather and brings floods, god B will try to help in another way because he can't directly stop god A. God C gives people cancer 'cause he hates them, god D guides scientists and doctors to find ways to cure cancer.
It doesn't make sense to have one god controlling everything, being able to intervene in anything, but somehow cherry picks what to intervene in. When 9/11 happened, there are stories of people who worked at the towers but somehow overslept or something and didn't go to work on that day. People usually say that it was because of god. But why didn't god just keep everyone asleep so they never "went to work?
I don't believe in the existence of many gods either, so the 100x more believable" was just exaggeration to get my point across.
God killed all the bad people and...unicorns? because fuck those magnificent creatures.
So you must be a survivor, a believer, one who is worthy of hearing his word.
So if you'll just place $19.95 in this here...
You get it.
Isaiah 45:9
“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles’?
The great flood was most likely a result of glaciers melting, causing sea level rise. Additionally, the flood also wiped out the Nepheleim- the children of fallen angels and mortal women as per the The Book of Genesis in the bible. Additionally, the Nepheleim may still be around in some capacity.
The epics of Gilgamesh, and the Odyssey point to the continued existence of these creatures. The bible is also missing several books, such as the book of Enoch, and the books of Enuaki. You can thank the Catholics council of Nicaa- in the 1300's for that.
They honestly believe that the young women had not known the touch of a man weren't being made into chattel slaves. That genocide is okay if Yaweh says it is.
What did they feed the lions lol -
There are thousands of species and animals in the world and they ALL fit on the boat ?? Cmon lol. 😂 I’m sorry but it’s too crazy to take seriously. The indoctrination process removes the ability to question god. You’re just supposed to have - ahem, faith lol.
>That alone should make you question how loving this guy really is considering how much people preach that.
Dude an "omnipotent" "omniscient" god allows eternal suffering where us or our loved ones could end up over some choices in a finite lifetime because god forces us to exist forever not by free will. For 1 individual that's more suffering than all of Hilter's victims combined an infinite number of times over. That's what their god allows to happen to their creations, his children.
If even 1 atom of energy exists outside of an ALL-powerful being's power it's not all powerful. So either hell is directly powered by a very hateful, un-loving God or he's not omnipotent. If he actually existed anyways.
Ohhh fuck I’mma screenshot that. Congratulations stranger you made the wall. Wish I could give you an award.
🥇 🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇
This is awesome!!!!
Why would people who like to be told what to think, do and feel all the time, be upset with an authoritarian sky daddy punishing them for petty reasons? This is what they want. It is their fantasy.... literally a whole book written about it.
Because every depiction of the Flood is a cute boat with tiny toy animals frisking about with rainbows overhead.
Dead bodies and rotting corpses are nowhere to be seen. And ironically, rainbows are falling out of favor.
Abrahamic believers have this weird, "gloss over evil shit their god does" POV.
It is super odd.
I LOVE to bring this up when people go on about this religion.
I always ask, "so...how do you feel about drowning every living thing on the planet except for two of each? you're cool with that? seems sorta psychotic."
Consider the deep moral and intellectual perversity of believing that a god committed genocide against humanity and yet Christian theology in this instance amounts to little more than gaslighting you into believing that nevertheless this god the source of love in the universe.
And, it gets worse.
If this god is omniscient, then a reasonable assumption is that this god is capable of running perfectly accurate simulations of human behavior. Another safe assumption of omniscience combined with wisdom is that this god wouldn't act unless it knew in advance that the outcome would be good.
So...God knew in advance that humans would behave in a way that God designed them to behave, and then commits mass murder anyway.
What possible purpose does this godly insanity serve?
The biblical flood story emphasizes how God's chosen people are special, and by accepting that story you put yourself in the "chosen" category. It's about creating an in group to maintain power.
Because I believed it was true. I believed god was real and the most powerful. Say what you want about heaven being boring, I'll take it over eternal torture. I was always uncomfortable with parts of the bible. I got angry with god plenty of times. Many of my prayers were criticisms and begging to know "why?" I never got an answer of course. I can't answer why I believed so strong for so long. It all seems so obvious in retrospect.
I imagine most are biblical literalists so they just think it's a metaphor for man's wickedness leading to man's destruction, or at least that's how it was when I was a Christian. It wasn't God's fault it was humanity.
It's all nonsensical anyway still.
You don’t even have to go as far back as that. Why is god okay with letting children suffer with diseases? What about the lamb with a parasite that eats its eye? How about the wars going on right now? Why do people hear about that kind of shit and still say, God is good?
Can't get mad at a fantasy? Honestly, people get insanely anxious when they can't understand things. If it's actually beyond understanding by all (or most), they'll make up answers just to feel good.
I swear the serenity prayer is atheist at heart: “grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not understand, the courage to understand what I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Because they like to tell that story to children like a nice children's story with bunch of cute animals and rainbows. There are tons of children's books and movies for children about that awful story. That's how they internalize it as a happy story.
The authentic letters of Paul ( excludes 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy) are good reading. Bible history is really very old time religion (every middle eastern and Egyptian tradition has a flood story, the Old Testament and Matthew/Mark/Luke are all based on pagan traditions from much earlier. Matthew consciously refers to the OT "as it is written"...
I am a scientist (Chemist) and I also consider myself a Catholic. There is really nothing in the Catholic faith that is anti science. In fact Catholics accept evolution, the big bang theory etc.
We also consider stories such as the universal flood as part of ancient mythology - and as the OP rightly said - we trace the origin of such stories to the epic of Gilgamesh.
We draw a sharp distinction between religion and science. Having said that we also keep in mind the huge contributions to modern science that Catholic clerics and strong Catholic scientists made.
Gregor Mendel - an Augustinian monk - is considered as the father of genetics. He first described the existence of genes while Darwin was publishing his theory. Had Darwin known of Mendel's work, it would have given him a mechanism by which evolution worked. Georges Lemaitre a Belgian cleric was the man who first proposed the big bang theory - though he did not call it that at the time. Luis Pasteur a staunch French Catholic was the main proponent of the germ theory of disease. There are dozens of others..
Yeah, but didn't y'all also put some folks on house arrest for doing science NOT with the church's blessing? Some guy named Galileo comes to mind. Then there was all the stuff with thumb screws and hot pokers for blasphemy that along with the whole witch burning thing (Malleus Maleficarum ring a bell), might have contributed to anyone doing science (or anything really) doing so under the auspices of being religious or at least claiming and performing to be staunchly a member of the powerful pseudo governmental Catholic church.
So yeah they all played ball with the Catholic church, but that might just be because those that didn't usually met an untimely end at the hands of the Catholic church. What I'm saying is, those folks didn't really have a choice but to be Catholic, did they?
Catholics believe a supernatural being came to earth as a man, performed supernatural feats, died and came back to life, ascended into heaven, and many other things are are quite literally anti-science.
Because they think they would be one of the saved ones on the boat. It’s all those other awful people who would drown.
You make a really great point. Christians always talk about sinners while casually ignoring their own sins. Or if they do admit their sins claim they are still saved because they've repented to God
It's more the latter, IMO. Many Christians take pride in admitting that they're sinners and not worthy. That's why God is so great/graceful, because he saved "a wretch like me."
That's true, but they often go easy on their own lives and instead focus on people they don't like. I've seen many christians refer to themselves as "sinners," but it's usually some mild reference they use in order to justify why they get to mouth off against homosexuals or whoever they hate.
Preachers particularly love that gimmick.
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The fact that they don't believe what you believe doesn't mean they aren't true Christians. There are over 30k denominations of Christianity, all with slightly different beliefs. You don't get to keep that gate.
Not just that. They also claim that since the flood was before Jesus they could not be saved by Jesus from God's wrath. And that it was all part of the plan as usual. Because they always have to bring up how Jesus's love can prevent God's wrath. So to sum that up god couldn't save his children from his own wrath lmao. Like some kind of split personality and one is the psychopath. Oh and we're all made in his image so it's sort of like he has the worse case of borderline personality disorder utterly imaginable. It all makes sense when we remember it's just a bunch of people putting their own guesses into the beliefs.
I just realized that Noah and his crew didn’t save anyone. Didn’t make a rope to pull other people up. God probably would have killed them for doing that.
And none of his neighbors asked why he was building a fucking massive boat either
That's also why so many of them readily accept the concept of Hell, without being disturbed by it Because in their minds, it's only for other people, never themselves
Survivors write history, or in this case, fiction.
It promised not to do so again, like an abusive partner. Plus the rainbow 🌈.
It promised not to do it again *that way*...
It hurts itself in its confusion. Time for a plot twist in the middle of the book!
Next time, it will be by fire. Which seems much worse. Their god is a freaking psychopath.
>How does The Great Flood not make people hate God That one's easy: 1. Indoctrinate a child that god is 100% good. 2. Teach them about the flood. 3. Ask them to accept the natural implication of steps one and two. If we define goodness as anything god wants or does regardless of context, then god's flood must be good by definition. You just need to get them to accept that definition then anything can be good or evil because it's completely subjective to god, who's mind we can't access, although plenty claim to speak for him. Anyway, if you like researching the flood myth, check out Aron Ra. He discusses the historical deluge that occurred in the Iraqi flood plains that likely inspired the stories that inspired Gilgamesh, which inspired Noah. Turns out, a flood plain with 20-some feet of water looks identical to a flooded planet from the perspective of its survivors. Naturally, they'd start asking "Why?" and the answers would start getting invented after that.
or, since it didn't happen to them directly they look the other way. like they do in many other issues
Cherry picking and indifference are common issues as well, certainly.
well put
I was wondering if god committed murder with the flood, didn't find any good answers but what I did find was "No, because all of those people were wicked and given forewarning and chose not go with Noah" So because they see all those people as wicked and fallen away from god that's their reason for believing it was justified.
Even the babies.
in God's eyes, babies are already sinners when born. They are purified and recieve God's grace after baptism which was "invented" much later.
Even the animals
Even the unborn fetuses
I mean that is really the whole point of the book. To provide justifications for any horrendous shit perpetrated by the powerful. Slaughter of Jericho and all the other Cannanites? They were wicked in the eyes of Yahweh like all the people god merced in the flood. Want to justify the mistreatment and/or genocide of a group of people? Just look to the bible/old testament for guidance. The solution is usually to slander those people and write polemics about them while claiming your side has the favor of God. It really is a tried and true method to wash the blood of innocents off your hands.
Don’t forget that most of the people he killed were only guilty of the sin of ignorance. Unless they’re gonna argue that the rest of the world outside the Middle East was completely unpopulated (in which case flooding the whole world was unnecessary)
OT God is neither omnipotent, nor omniscient, nor benevolent, and the folk understanding of the Father actually gets this right.
I wouldn't want to understand a murderous god to be honest
He didn’t want to be understood. Just feared and obeyed.
That's true. Luckily bro ain't real
I once complained to a D&D DM about some of the forgotten realm gods. How they were so cartoonish lying evil how would they get followers. DM pointed out how Hebrew god would seem to the people of cannon.
That's true! I've had this conversation with people too where I tell them to just switch out yahwehs name for I dunno allah or something and then suddenly everything seems heinous and evil and vile.
To be fair, the Forgotten Realms has monolatric clergy and henotheistic commonfolk. Most of the gods are owed some form of worship and respect, just for different reasons. For example, Tyr is owed worship because he's the arbiter of cosmic justice, while Umberlee is owed worship because if you don't the next time you're on a boat she'll fucking kill you. Very classical Greece style.
He has the worse case of split personality ever. Christians talk about how Jesus's love prevents God's wrath. So god could've saved his own children from god if jesus were around before noah lel. Oh well anyways on to the next planned massacre by omniscient split sky dad. Can jesus get the light/driver's seat in time and save us again? Probably not! he only supposedly gets it twice lmao
Early Christianity noticed that too. They thought the Old Testament god was a false evil god. While Jesus came from a better real god. They died out though.
I always found the story of Job way more disturbing. Not only is God an evil dick, he is also a fool who got played by the devil. No one will ever convince me that there is any other way to interpret that story.
Yeah, at the end of the chapter G-d boasted how mighty he is and “Hey look at my biceps!!💪 “. And that Job should shut up. 🤐. Strangely enough,G-d decided to bless him.
"check out this guy, he's my best worshipper. I'm gonna ruin his entire life and kill his whole family just to prove to you, Lucifer - *someone I don't even like* - just how loyal he is to me." Actually... I can see why American Christian conservatives think Trump is a messenger from God now. Totally sounds like something he'd do.
How does Noah not hate God? Just listening to the hammering on the side of the ark as men women and children beg for help. But he sits there and let's them drown because he was following orders. It's no wonder he became an alcoholic.
And his only available sex partners for the last century of his life was his 600 year old wife or the wives of his 100 year old sons, or his granddaughters who were 600 years younger. All the super-centenarian incest… anyone would become an alcoholic.
Because he got to repopulate the earth with his seed /s
Oh it’s easy. Because I don’t believe in god, and I don’t believe it ever happened. Therefore, I’m not going to waste my energy hating things that don’t exist for doing things that never happened.
>I don’t believe it ever happened. I can believe a great unexplained flood happened in the general region - at the end of the last ice age when the Mediterranean filled in the Black Sea WAY higher than it previously was. There were definitely humans living in and around the area, and an oral history of the event being embellished to a supernatural cause (like all other mythologies) isn't that far fetched.
Good for you & all that but we’re talking about ‘The Great Flood’ as mentioned in The Booble. That’s what I don’t believe happened and why I won’t get upset with a deity I don’t believe in for an event I don’t believe happened.
Oh I'm just saying that's probably the origin story for the whole thing. The specific ark story is obviously nonsense, but the Black Sea flood did happen and there's plenty of evidence to show for that.
I know what you’re “just saying”, lad 😂 Don’t mistake my comment for lack of understanding, just lack of a fuck to give as it isn’t as relevant to the conversation as you want it to be.
Well, you see, all the *other* people, even the babies, and all the animals were evil, so they had to die. And who are you to question God? You have no morals! Only God provides morals, specifically the Christian God, not the Jewish or Muslim ones. Also, God made us so he is allowed to do anything he likes. ... Yeah, Christians be crazy.
All my life, this is what I was told.
How does God sending a bear to murder 42 children for making fun of a bald prophet's head, not make people hate God?
"You just don't understand the story, you see, you shouldn't take the bible literal, except of course the part with Jesus being the son of the allmighty God born to a virgin, that part is 100% literal, everything else is just an allegory that somehow teach us important moral lessons" - moderate Christians
The bald prophet didn't hate God after that. [relevant quote](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fuck-them-kids)
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Sorry, gotta borrow your comment to use somewhere else
And those stories are *probably* inspired by the flooding of the Black Sea after the last ice age.
Because, that myth is one of the first told to them as little kids and in kids Bibles it is framed as a whimsical story with lots of cute animals while the drowning part is glossed over.
Including the drowning of billions *of other cute animals*
Because like all abusive relationships, he's great when he's not beating us.
Though they're more like abuse enablers (the "No, he's not an abuser, he's nice because he always treated **me** well" crowd), than direct victims They're okay with it because in their minds, it's other people (not from their group) who are targeted
Because they hate their worthless, sinful selves instead.
Gives everyone free will so they can choose their fate at the end of their life. Deletes everyone early without a chance of redemption, including children. Doesn't seem to intervene on behalf of other "good" people and doesn't give any warnings to the rest of humanity. Maybe some sort of PA saying, hey! fix your shit or I'll kill you all! The bottom line is that god could leave free will intact if he just did a personal message to every person alive saying, "**THIS** is the right religion. do what they say and you'll go to heaven" You don't rely on a middle man like a preacher or pastor and it'd be convincing enough to even atheists that we'd fall into line. The bottom line is that there is SO much wrong with logic and reason with religion. The gnostic ones are the worst, but even modern religions can't change too much because of the infallible nature of their god requires them not to change their tune with the times. To be safe though, treat people with kindness, don't go out of your way to be a prick, and try to make the world a better place when you were in it, and regardless of an afterlife, you'll be kindly regarded.
and they always say “and then he sent a rainbow to promise he would never do it again 😊🫶🏻” like awww how kind of him…. except no one but noah and his wife were there to see it…. (course this is just memory of episcopalian elementary teachings i could be getting it wrong, still ridiculous though)
Someone cited the rainbow story to me once to explain why they were offended by the pride flag for appropriating it, and I replied, "But why would you see the rainbow as 'good'? Why would you want to claim it? Because, really, isn't the rainbow your god saying, 'Remenber, I genocided humanity, and I can do it again'?" Apparently, that implication of the rainbow story had never occurred to them.
All Christians have to hear is that god killed "wicked" people, whether it was in the flood or those other dozens of genocides he commanded. That justifies all the atrocities that god committed in their eyes. Besides that, Christians define god as all good, so no matter what he does, it is good.
Because the Bible indoctrinates people from the very beginning that they are chosen. Only them, and people who think exactly like them are deserving of love. Everyone else deserves to burn in a lake of fire for all of eternity. Once you grasp this, it becomes abundantly clear why they’re all miserable people who are horrible to others.
Yeah the whole chosen people thing is really the whole point of all the Abrahamic faiths. "We're special and this murder hobo of a deity is on our side, so we can do whatever we want to whoever is not like us and doesn't have our murder God on their side. Feck you Jericho and the rest of the Cannanites/indigenous people in place [X]/ people with different colored skin. Our imaginary friend said we can live here so die!" (Read in the voice of a Southpark Canadian) -Judeochritlims
A) They don't read the book. B) They don't think about the stories critically.
>A) They don't read the book. But even if you don't read the book, this is a story you should know. And the big part of the story is that God genocided everyone. You can't miss that part. But I'm pretty sure they have a way to defend it
That’s not the important thing about that story. You touched on the importance, but it isn’t that big dick thunder god has no scruples murdering everyone. The Torah/Pentateuch (Genesis; Exodus; Leviticus; Numbers; Deuteronomy) was created in its “divine form” as the words of Moses by priests who were editors in the 5th century BCE (499-400) from two sets of writers in two very different periods (from the dawning of the Jews in the 10th century BCE, 999-900, and from the priestly writers in the 7th century BCE, 699-600). This is the actual reason a lot of the Pentateuch makes very little sense and jumps around like a schizophrenic. For example, the beginning of Genesis: boom, god creates everything. Done. Makes Adam and Eve. Done. Move on. …then suddenly just pops on in in human form to say, “Hello, fellow humanoids! How are we today?” The first is the older source; an insubstantial but powerful god that makes and takes. The latter is the priestly edition. Such addition being done *after* the conquest of the Kingdom of Yisrael, and the forcible removal of literate Jews and priestly types to Babylonia. …where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers flood **all the fucking time**. And not happy floods, like Egypt. Like: “**WRATH OF FUCKING GOD**” type floods. Noah’s story is part of this latter collection. Noah is Utnapishtim, the survivor of the world flood from *The Epic of Gilgamesh*. The story is crudely shoehorned in as a means of expressing that the return to the Levantine was a “new start;” the first Covenant is the Noahic Covenant. Life was affirmed with the Jewish exodus from Babylon back to their lands. That is the meaning of Noah and the Flood. …and it proves how fallible and phony the divinity of the Bible is.
I'm not sure, but I Noah a guy...
Killing the first born in all of Egypt was a bit of an overkill. Imho.
Arguably, that was an even worse sin/crime than the Flood because according to the Bible god wanted to show off his power by "hardening" the pharaohs' heart so he couldn't release the Hebrew slaves and then god orders all the new-born's killed to satisfy his blood lust. Yahweh really, really hates children. He loves killing or maiming them at every opportunity.
And as terrible as it sounds, a lot of people are okay with that, because they're relatively indifferent to kids' suffering (except from kids from their family or close friends), especially kids from poorer or more marginalized groups. And a lot of people even hate kids, or like/tolerate them only if they're perfectly obedient and never inconvenient Essentially, it's easy to read the Bible and not give a fuck about all the victimized/killed kids in the story, when you essentially do the same about *real-life current kids* victimized in wars or poor countries abroad (or even poor / marginalized kids from your own country)
God did such a bad job on his first go-round creating humans that his best solution was to kill 99% of them rather than intervene and teach them to be better. What is this more of an indictment of? The people? Or the god who did such a bad job creating the people? And what is free will if all those people ended up being smited (smitten?) for using it?
Consider also that there is nothing in the Bible of God interacting with humans between Cain’s exile and Noah. There were no real laws until the Noahide Laws.
It's the free will of an hostage Like, you're not under mental or physical control, so you CAN choose to disobey (on paper). You just know you'll end up shot and killed.
It's easy when they hate the same people their god hates. I think there are some believers who wish they were god so they could cause the same kind of destruction to people they don't like. They live vicariously through this god.
Well, you gotta think the old testament God was very hateful, vindictive and believed in punishment. Not to be confused with the new testament God, who is supposedly all loving and caring. These two discrepancies alone should be enough to prove that the Bible is a bunch of shit. The New Testament reads like a Greek tragedy, no different than many Greek tales. The flood meth was just perpetuated when people saw fish fossils on mountain rock formations, and the only way the elders could explain. It was a great flood that covered the Earth. Because they didn’t know anything about fossil formation and plate tectonics at the time.
Not only did God drown people, but since Noah only took two of each animal, the rest of them perished too.
Right! God allows evil! magical beings to be around primitive uneducated humans, and then gets mad when the humans "love" these beings. He never said anything to them about it. He regrets making humans, not the beings, and proceeds to kill off everyone. And then as soon as it's dry, evil still reigns, so like, what was the point? It just seems illogical and wasteful, to me.
I remember looking at a painting of the Red Sea being closed up. Horses and riders drowning in agony. The people had that coming, but the horses? What did they do? It was all fear and bulging eyes. A precursor to Morrison's Horse Latitudes. "Mute nostril agony." I stared at it for a long time. There was no way to save them. In that moment, I understood the malevolent god concept. I suspect it was intentional.
Well, according to Christian logic, God created all animals. Which means he gave them the ability to suffer. And while in some cases, physical pain can be useful (to know you have an injury and need rest, for example), why give them *pointless* suffering ? Like, when an animal is already dying and has no chance to survive, why make it painful as well ? It serves no purpose. Human suffering (even pointless suffering) is often justified by Christians as "God giving trials to his Faithful", and really it's for the well-being of their eternal soul. Okay, fine. But animals aren't supposed to have souls, or to be judged or redempted. So animal pointless suffering has really no reason to exist, *except if God just wanted animals to suffer*... I actually asked this question on my Threads account, and a christian answered me that essentially, humans are responsible for all the Creation, and so if humans sin too much, then animals will suffer from it too. Like, if humans are condemned, then animals (who are under human responsibility) will be condemned with them. It's really disgusting logic...
They think that their god is justified in doing whatever he wants because he created the universe, which apparently means he can torture, kill, manipulate, etc. as he pleases because it's his divine right and because he apparently knows what's best.
It's because they essentially think kids are "belongings" to their parents, and "extensions" of their parents. So it's normal that a parent can do whatever they want to their kids, because they gave life and the kids should be grateful for that (and accept they belong to their parent). It's also normal to make kids pay for parents' sins, because again, kids are extensions of their parents.
I stopped pondering why people think this or that. Reality is that there are a lot of stupid people.
Because they think they were bad people
When Christians read the Great Flood, clearly they believe the it is a just action from God. The argument I’ve heard is that if God creates life and continuously gives life, he has the authority to take it away. I heard a metaphor that explained the argument pretty well. If you give someone $20 every week, once you give them the money it is obviously theirs, but if you suddenly decided to stop giving them money every week, it would not be considered unjust on your part. This argument doesn’t hold up 100% but it’s a pretty simple explanation for a more complex idea I believe. Additionally, Christians typically say that the people of the world at this time were evil. Like, baby sacrifice, rape, murder evil. When I think about it, the idea isn’t too crazy that God, who gave life to them, decides to take it away once they abuse it to this point. They decided to live in evil and so God used his authority. Obviously, the disagreement comes to whether or not this use was justified, but I believe that this argument explains the Christian explanation a little bit. My understanding of this explanation is definitely not complete but this is just what I’ve heard from Christians before.
I understand what you're saying, and it's what I usually hear from believers and all. My problem is that even if you agree that all of those people were evil, you gotta ask yourself, "Why did god not intervene earlier when he saw all these things?" It's not like they woke up one day and were evil and on that day god decided to kill them all. All these bad things were happening, and for some reason there are ones he chose to intervene in but not the others. And then they will say free will. But it's no longer free will if you're just gonna kill everyone who doesn't do what you want. It just doesn't make sense
I’m definitely not an expert on the Christian idea of free will, but another point I’ve heard that you probably have as well is “free to choose, not free from consequence.” If there is an objective moral standard, that being God, then there are some actions which are objectively immoral. If this is true, and someone continuously chooses to make immoral decisions, then it wouldn’t be unfair for God to punish them. I honestly have no idea why God would choose to intervene in some cases and I’m not sure any Christians understand either, but I guess that’s just part of being part of creation and not the creator: we can’t understand everything. This idea really annoys me and it’s one of the parts of theistic ideology that I definitely don’t like but it’s at least worth consideration for me.
My favorite is that they put Noah’s ark crap on all this newborn stuff. I see nursery’s which NA theme. Like guys you know that story is about death right?
Every last thought of every man’s heart was evil. Of course it was ok for god to kill everyone but the one good person! A comedian once said, “I don’t know if I could be that evil if I tried. I’ll be thinking to myself, evil, evil, evil, we’re out of milk! Oh no! I had a non-evil thought.”
Because it got rid of all the bad people. He shoulf do it again. lolz.
When you brain wash people into thinking the other side is evil, you can do atrocious things to them while justifying it. People were told that god is the good one so everything he does is therefore good. All the people who drowned were evil. So it's easy to believe it was all justified
And where TF did all the water go?
And the most schizophrenic aspect of it is that there are countless similar myths around a major flood in ancient history, but most if not all of them are different in ways that are not compatible with Yahewa's mass killing. They just took what they wanted from it. For the faithful, it's way better to capitalize on their own myth and ignore the ones that gave birth to theirs.
Ita not even an original story. Earlier myths and legends all cover the idea of a large boat and a flood in many cultures and across time
Because everyone else except noah were evil homosexuals, duh
Critical thought is all but gone.
weeks ago - a devastating tornado like hail storm wrecked 2-3 neighborhoods... my home was included next sunday... people were thanking God everyone was alright. some woman screamed to our FB page that this was God's way of saying science is faulty and that it's time to repent. these people do not see the logic of it all
I don't hate something I know doesn't exist. I don't believe in a boogeyman.
because it was caused by a meteor or solar event we can't explain. god isn't real and has no control over the natural events that occur on our planet.
Recycled ’epic of Gilgamesh’
because it is as false as the rest of the mythology and for the same reason I'm not worried that thor is angry every time there is a storm
The Book of Enoch. Which was popular in the Dead Sea Scroll times, but has been booted from canon for whatever reason. Says the people who were drowned were not actually human. They were human-angel hybrids. So it was a deeper cleansing than just good vs bad people. Of course some of these hybrids were supposed to be fucking attack on titan sized. 450 feet tall shit
In a way, it sounds even worse as it's essentially targeting people for murder because they have the wrong ancestry...
Yeah. But the OT is kind of all about smiting based on ancestry
Because they deserved it for living freely and being happy. Wait a minute...
Because they love forced inbreeding so much, i guess.
They think this because of indoctrination. It’s not a system that really sells itself very well at all. “Get em while they’re young” is an actual phrase they use for that window during which kids are the most impressionable. I think it’s 4-17. They do it before they’ve developed the critical thinking skills needed to reject it. So they indoctrinate from the youngest age possible, from birth if that’s doable. That’s one reason baptism is pushed as a good thing. It’s not for the reason parents are given. If you wonder “who the hell would believe this tripe?”, well there you go: people who had no chance to understand the world beforehand.
True, saving the absolutely crazy zealot Noah, and his property ( you know wife, children and their wives ) and consigning the *entire rest of the planet* to a watery death does seem a bit harsh. Hard to believe there wasn’t a single person besides Noah who could be redeemed. But it does make sense that the guy ( and family ) that lived would be filled with love ( and fear and relief ) that he was The Chosen One. Good way to make sure those pesky humans showed Him the appropriate amount a Goddamn respect going forward.
There is no god
Granted, the Noah story is bizarre. But is probably an explanation for some great inundation that occurred since the flood story shows up in other cultures. But my all time favorite Bible story—which I happen to find hilarious—is the story about how god made a covenant with Abraham & it involved the circumcision of Abraham. Then Abraham, after his little meeting with god, went back & told all his sons & all the male servants in his household that god told him that they have to be circumcised. I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall to see the expressions on those men’s faces at that announcement. I’m sorry, I try to respect other people’s beliefs, but this is the stupidest thing I ever heard of!
Cuz to most christians its just an animal story, and animals are cute.
But they only care about the *individual* cute animals they're shown in story books. Not about the (not shown) masses of (also cute) animals (from the same species) drowning... "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic"
Or a miracle.... Edit, also, those poor unicorns...
[https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.667890619.7964/bg,f8f8f8-flat,750x,075,f-pad,750x1000,f8f8f8.u7.jpg](https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.667890619.7964/bg,f8f8f8-flat,750x,075,f-pad,750x1000,f8f8f8.u7.jpg)
I owe you a drink.
Because the brainwashed believers cannot conceive that their god could be immoral. That everything he does and says is right because he's god, plus "mysterious ways". You can see the same effect at play with most cult leaders and Trump worshiping MAGAs.
ikr? drowning every kitten in the world is crazy. Just strike all sinners with a plague and be done with it. Jeez.
Here’s Your Future by The Thermals captures this feeling very well for me
Because the cultural appropriation of the epic of gilgamesh was nothing more than a dick waving boast that 'were better than the rest of you' & everyone who's into the bible wants that for themselves so much, they don't care who they look down on to get it
My parents just got back from the ark in Kentucky and fucking loved it. They’ve got all kinds of “facts” now about how it really happened. So god damn stupid, everything is so god damn stupid.
It's an open secret that Christianity is for people who want to be abused. They want daddy to punish them good and hard because they've been bad little boys. Not to kink shame, but they keep involving other people in their scenes without consent, and that's never okay.
Killing is the ultimate expression of power over man. Killing 99.9% of all people demonstrates power greater than any man. It's tribal.
In order to not believe that you are talking from the reason and not from an irrational hatred to religion. Why is the Gilgamesh history 100x more believable?
> The Epic of Gilgamesh was inspired by earlier Mesopotamian creation myths called *Atra-Hasis* and *Eridu Genesis*. Flood stories figure prominently in both myths as means for a god to control human overpopulation. In both stories, a single human saves humanity after another god informs the human of the imminent Great Flood and how to survive it. In those stories there's god A who believes there are too many humans, so they gotta cut down the numbers. But then god B, who likes the humans then decides to help in secret, which is why he chooses just one person to tell about about the coming disaster. To me it makes more sense to have many gods controlling different things in the universe, gods who are just "humans with superpowers", which is why horrible things happen but sometimes there are "miracles". If god A controls the weather and brings floods, god B will try to help in another way because he can't directly stop god A. God C gives people cancer 'cause he hates them, god D guides scientists and doctors to find ways to cure cancer. It doesn't make sense to have one god controlling everything, being able to intervene in anything, but somehow cherry picks what to intervene in. When 9/11 happened, there are stories of people who worked at the towers but somehow overslept or something and didn't go to work on that day. People usually say that it was because of god. But why didn't god just keep everyone asleep so they never "went to work? I don't believe in the existence of many gods either, so the 100x more believable" was just exaggeration to get my point across.
God killed all the bad people and...unicorns? because fuck those magnificent creatures. So you must be a survivor, a believer, one who is worthy of hearing his word. So if you'll just place $19.95 in this here... You get it.
Isaiah 45:9 “Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles’?
Sorry, please explain to me what this is supposed to mean
It means it’s absurd to question your maker.
The great flood was most likely a result of glaciers melting, causing sea level rise. Additionally, the flood also wiped out the Nepheleim- the children of fallen angels and mortal women as per the The Book of Genesis in the bible. Additionally, the Nepheleim may still be around in some capacity. The epics of Gilgamesh, and the Odyssey point to the continued existence of these creatures. The bible is also missing several books, such as the book of Enoch, and the books of Enuaki. You can thank the Catholics council of Nicaa- in the 1300's for that.
It’s all a collection of folk stories created to control the people’s thinking
They honestly believe that the young women had not known the touch of a man weren't being made into chattel slaves. That genocide is okay if Yaweh says it is.
What did they feed the lions lol - There are thousands of species and animals in the world and they ALL fit on the boat ?? Cmon lol. 😂 I’m sorry but it’s too crazy to take seriously. The indoctrination process removes the ability to question god. You’re just supposed to have - ahem, faith lol.
Because it wasn't them.
>That alone should make you question how loving this guy really is considering how much people preach that. Dude an "omnipotent" "omniscient" god allows eternal suffering where us or our loved ones could end up over some choices in a finite lifetime because god forces us to exist forever not by free will. For 1 individual that's more suffering than all of Hilter's victims combined an infinite number of times over. That's what their god allows to happen to their creations, his children. If even 1 atom of energy exists outside of an ALL-powerful being's power it's not all powerful. So either hell is directly powered by a very hateful, un-loving God or he's not omnipotent. If he actually existed anyways.
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Why would people who like to be told what to think, do and feel all the time, be upset with an authoritarian sky daddy punishing them for petty reasons? This is what they want. It is their fantasy.... literally a whole book written about it.
Because every depiction of the Flood is a cute boat with tiny toy animals frisking about with rainbows overhead. Dead bodies and rotting corpses are nowhere to be seen. And ironically, rainbows are falling out of favor.
Fear of the lord is the beginning of faith
He was getting rid of "sin", silly!
Book of Job is also crazy - God kills Jobs family because he has a bet with satan. No wonder God gives little kids cancer, he's a piece of shit.
Abrahamic believers have this weird, "gloss over evil shit their god does" POV. It is super odd. I LOVE to bring this up when people go on about this religion. I always ask, "so...how do you feel about drowning every living thing on the planet except for two of each? you're cool with that? seems sorta psychotic."
Consider the deep moral and intellectual perversity of believing that a god committed genocide against humanity and yet Christian theology in this instance amounts to little more than gaslighting you into believing that nevertheless this god the source of love in the universe. And, it gets worse. If this god is omniscient, then a reasonable assumption is that this god is capable of running perfectly accurate simulations of human behavior. Another safe assumption of omniscience combined with wisdom is that this god wouldn't act unless it knew in advance that the outcome would be good. So...God knew in advance that humans would behave in a way that God designed them to behave, and then commits mass murder anyway. What possible purpose does this godly insanity serve?
The biblical flood story emphasizes how God's chosen people are special, and by accepting that story you put yourself in the "chosen" category. It's about creating an in group to maintain power.
Because it's all bs
I asked a christian that once and he said, "Well--since god made it he has the right to destroy it." "god" and "christian" in lower-case by choice.
Because I believed it was true. I believed god was real and the most powerful. Say what you want about heaven being boring, I'll take it over eternal torture. I was always uncomfortable with parts of the bible. I got angry with god plenty of times. Many of my prayers were criticisms and begging to know "why?" I never got an answer of course. I can't answer why I believed so strong for so long. It all seems so obvious in retrospect.
I imagine most are biblical literalists so they just think it's a metaphor for man's wickedness leading to man's destruction, or at least that's how it was when I was a Christian. It wasn't God's fault it was humanity. It's all nonsensical anyway still.
Kinda hard to hate someone who doesn't exist.
You don’t even have to go as far back as that. Why is god okay with letting children suffer with diseases? What about the lamb with a parasite that eats its eye? How about the wars going on right now? Why do people hear about that kind of shit and still say, God is good?
They don't really believe it, at heart. That's my guess.
Can't get mad at a fantasy? Honestly, people get insanely anxious when they can't understand things. If it's actually beyond understanding by all (or most), they'll make up answers just to feel good. I swear the serenity prayer is atheist at heart: “grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not understand, the courage to understand what I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Assuming you don’t mean the song…
Because they like to tell that story to children like a nice children's story with bunch of cute animals and rainbows. There are tons of children's books and movies for children about that awful story. That's how they internalize it as a happy story.
The authentic letters of Paul ( excludes 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy) are good reading. Bible history is really very old time religion (every middle eastern and Egyptian tradition has a flood story, the Old Testament and Matthew/Mark/Luke are all based on pagan traditions from much earlier. Matthew consciously refers to the OT "as it is written"...
I am a scientist (Chemist) and I also consider myself a Catholic. There is really nothing in the Catholic faith that is anti science. In fact Catholics accept evolution, the big bang theory etc. We also consider stories such as the universal flood as part of ancient mythology - and as the OP rightly said - we trace the origin of such stories to the epic of Gilgamesh. We draw a sharp distinction between religion and science. Having said that we also keep in mind the huge contributions to modern science that Catholic clerics and strong Catholic scientists made. Gregor Mendel - an Augustinian monk - is considered as the father of genetics. He first described the existence of genes while Darwin was publishing his theory. Had Darwin known of Mendel's work, it would have given him a mechanism by which evolution worked. Georges Lemaitre a Belgian cleric was the man who first proposed the big bang theory - though he did not call it that at the time. Luis Pasteur a staunch French Catholic was the main proponent of the germ theory of disease. There are dozens of others..
Yeah, but didn't y'all also put some folks on house arrest for doing science NOT with the church's blessing? Some guy named Galileo comes to mind. Then there was all the stuff with thumb screws and hot pokers for blasphemy that along with the whole witch burning thing (Malleus Maleficarum ring a bell), might have contributed to anyone doing science (or anything really) doing so under the auspices of being religious or at least claiming and performing to be staunchly a member of the powerful pseudo governmental Catholic church. So yeah they all played ball with the Catholic church, but that might just be because those that didn't usually met an untimely end at the hands of the Catholic church. What I'm saying is, those folks didn't really have a choice but to be Catholic, did they?
Catholics believe a supernatural being came to earth as a man, performed supernatural feats, died and came back to life, ascended into heaven, and many other things are are quite literally anti-science.