beowulf_king

Sorry if I repeat other people, but this thread has gotten too long for me to read all the way through.

We do have Socrates, who wasn't Jewish, but believed in other god(s) besides the classical Greek gods. He had a school for followers, but was soon put on trial and convicted of corrupting the youth, and ended up with the death penalty. The Greeks weren't very accepting of other religions. It would be kinda hard to go and convince them of another religion...and live.

This is very true. But the similarities also extend to cultures in all over the world. As to what caused it can be hard to pinpoint, since all settlements during this time were by water sources, which flood. I'll try to provide my knowledge of the history of the flood. [My dates or exact details may be wrong since I am writing this from memory, but the general gist of it all is correct.] The earliest writing we have on the flood is on tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh, when the gods plan to flood the world because it's to noisy. The head god warns Utnapistim to build an arc out of his house, fill it with pairs of all animals, and with his family and arc builders. The world floods and they land on a mountain. Utn. sends out a dove, it returns, sends out a swallow, it returns, then he sends out a raven and it never comes back. He then sacrifices to the gods and goes off to live a normal life. This was written around 4,000-5,000 BCE, but incomplete traces of this work in stone fragments goes to about 6,000 BCE. The biblical story is a derivative of this original.

Before this, we only have oral tradition so there is no record of the true written events that would have caused it. There are some predictions though as to certain "catastrophic" events:

http://surge.ods.org/idle/religion/flood.htm

There is other talk of the landway of the Black Sea breaking. I highly doubt this one and rather look at the fact that the water level of the black sea rising. Myths always exaggerate events.

It is important to note that many of the hundreds of flood stories we have include mountains. Some involve the mountain being the last area of dry land were a few survivors go but end up starving, or where the arc lands, or even where they anchor their boat with long ropes to prevent being pulled away. Through oral tradition, these similar stories of a single flood event will slowly change and become their own different flood story.

I was arguing....cross that...kindly discussing religion with her and they brought up the fact that almost all religions have a flood story. Well, they didn't expect me to know so much about myths.

To summarize all my rambling, especially if you decided not to read it if it was too long, there was some large event in the past that was passed on through ages by oral tradition, and was morphed throughout time until we have the stories known today. You shouldn't disbelieve the flood story, per se, but disbelieve the representations of that flood story today.

Doctor X

Did Socrates include YHWH/El as one of these gods? I am unaware of that.

You are close on the Flood Myth. The earliest is the Sumerian of King Ziusudra. It is very simple and fragmented, but is the basis of the Gilgamesh flood.

Now . . . of course . . . THAT global flood happened . . . yes. . . .

--J.D.

ceinwyn

I'm sorry but I must challenge you on this point. There's an excellent book out just recently, called "Before the Flood" that shows exactly how the Black Sea might've flooded, thus freaking out many thousands of people.

There's archaeology involved, so tread carefully

Jack the Bodiless

LP675:
I will grant you this.
Irrelevant. Plenty of atheists believe "some sort of flood" happened, but this would not be the event depicted in the Bible.
Ye, almost all Christians in the Western world believe the Flood to be a myth. You seem to be underestimating just how strange America is, when compared to the rest of the "Christian" world. Most European Christians, for instance, are entirely unaware that anyone (other than the certifiably insane) believes the Old Testament to be literally true. Richard Dawkins was attacked in a British newspaper for his "ignorance" in assuming that some Christians believed this.

I'm not sure what the situation is in the third world, but I think you'll find that literal-Genesis creationism is rare there too. They DO teach basic science there.

Sven

Coming from Germany, I can confirm this. I was totally flabbergasted (I like this word ) when I first heard that there are some people out there who believe that the flood and (the Christian sort of) creation really happened. When I heard that there is even something calling itself institute of creation research I didn't know if to laugh, to cry or to bang my head :banghead:

Pentagram

Ditto here. Should my christian friends stumble upon a creationist they would eye him/her suspiciously and then hastily back out the room before the obvious madman did anything violent...

Answerer

Please include Asian Christians as well. Oh wait, most of them don't believe in evolution, so I guess its right to call them creationists as well.

Sparrow

Sven and Pentagram: I envy you. Not only are there many people here who believe in a literal and inerrant bible, they run for political office. Unfortunately they sometimes win.

I suppose one could blame our vaunted freedom of religion for why we have so many fringe theologies.

Jim Larmore

Sven,

Your arrogance is definitely showing my friend. What makes you so sure you are in possession of all the truth? It always amazes me just how gullible everyone is in accepting the status quo's stance on whats real and whats myth in our world.

You like flabbergasted? I have a little research work you can do which may further flabbergast you. See if you can find evidence of meteor impacts in the sedimentary layers of our world. If they took several millions of years to deposit we should at least see the remains of some nickel or iron from these cosmic projectiles from the past.

Sven

If you like to call it arrogance to laugh at folks with anachronistic world views, so be it.

When this status quo is backed up by 150 years of scientific research, I see no problem with accepting it. I only have a problem with a world view which is contradicted by 150 years of scientific research.

I leave this to the experts... but I think I actually heard something about this somewhere already.

Edited to add: Already found something! I told you to search at TO before you post anything here. Here's the link. But since you don't like TO, I give you the references they list there directly:


Grieve, R. A. F., 1997. Extraterrestrial impact events: the record in the rocks and the stratigraphic record. Palaeogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology 132: 5-23.

Becker, Luann, 2002 (Mar.), Repeated blows. Scientific American 286(3): 76-83.
Impact Stratigraphy" - Geological Society of America 2002 Denver Annual Meeting (October 27-30, 2002), Session No. 178.
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2002AM/fin...ssion_2932.htm
Drilling into Impact Structures: Petrology, Geochemistry, and Geophysics - Geological Society of America 2002 Denver Annual Meeting (October
27-30, 2002), Session No. 142 http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2002AM/fin...ssion_2248.htm

Montanari, A., and Koeberl, C., 2000. Impact Stratigraphy: The Italian Record. Springer Verlag, Heidelberg, 312 pp (ISBN 3-540-42286-2).

and some more links from there:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Theb...ctcraters.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovi...ea.html#proof4
http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/


What was your claim again? You wanted to flabbergast me?