Possibly a silly question, but why did god destroy most of the population of the earth with a thumping great fludde? Why such a complex, convoluted, inefficient method? This is a god who popped the entire universe into existence almost as an afterthought ("he made the stars also") on 26 October 4004BCE.

He asked one man (presumably assisted by family) to go through a complicated ritual of building an impossible wooden boat. He required animals to be gathered from all over the world (sloths from South America, fairy penguins from Antarctic, koalas, kangaroos, platypuses, Tasmanian tigers from Australia, Dodos from Mauritius, Bison from America, and a partridge in a pear tree). He presumably required enough food to be gathered to feed this menagerie for a year, including food
for carnivores.

He had some sort of grass layer on top of the waters for insects and other racially discriminated against "kinds" to survive. He allowed salt and fresh water fish to live in, at best, extremely brackish water without ill effects and despite the fact that most fish will not survive outside of their natural habitat.

And if there were only two of each "kind" YECs must then turn around and explain rapid
speciation (evolution? ssshhhh) in well, less than 3,000 years). To explain, say Polar bears from Brown Bears, African and Indian Elephants, White Rhinos, and the AIDS virus.

Then we get to the really neat bit. After the waters subsided absolutely all the evidence of the chaos, death and absolute destruction completely disappear and we are left with a nice geologic and fossil record which shows that .. well… none of this ever actually happened.

So all this complexity to trash a few bipeds whom he could have zapped off the planet before breakfast and without thinking. For what reason? Why did he simply not do what he did at Sodom and Gomorrah, or what he did to the Egyptian first born. If he did not like people any more, why do it the hard way? And why destroy virtually every animal, tree, insect, bush, blade of grass.....well you get the picture. Just wish people off the planet and leave everything else alone. After all, this is god we are talking about! What an inept effort.

Norm

Norm,

Obviously, God's unlimited power does not mean he can't CHOOSE to limit his use of it. If he chooses to spend a month and a half on a task he could have accomplished instantaneously, then he must have some good reaons. Perhaps the survivors needed to learn a Valable Lesson (TM) that could only be taught by the experience of living in an impossible floating zoo for an extended period of time.

-Pompous Bastard

Probably he heard the Epic of Gilgamesh and thought it was a pretty neat story...

He needed to give nebula a superficially plausible alternative explanation for Evolution.

Who are you to question the omnimysterious God, infidel?

He forgot the plants
40 days in darkness means dead
oh one other thing / brackish water either you like salt water or you dont
oh yeah I forgot / whales and dolphins which could survive brackish water
I guess he shot all but 2

Actually, Noah was the first apologetic. The actual story is a bit different. Noah was a big fan of boats. He wanted to build the biggest boat yet known to man... before there were books designed to keep track of such records. He planned on hiring all sorts of entertainment, invent shuffleboard, gather lots of booze, and head for the Carribean. This was all just a big business idea. Then... god's toilet backed up...

Oh, I think of the Noah story as the definative refutation (in advance) of the Babel Fish argument from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A story so thoroughly implausible that only God could have thought of it.

I like Anne Rice's explanation in "The tale of the body thief" god is omnipotent sure, but he's not very bright

In the interest of equal opportunity, I hereby offer a slightly different version of the flood story to the one I originally posted.

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/5002/5002_01.asp


Norm