KeithHarwood

The reason why there are no Egyptian folk tales of The Flood is that, firstly, the Egytians were very interested in floods and recorded them assiduously and, secondly, those records still exist (the originals, not copies).

The conventional date of The Flood is about two thirds into the reign of Unas, the last king of the fifth dynasty. If anybody noticed a flood which wiped out all life on Earth they didn't think it was interesting enough to include in the records of the reign. And nudging The Flood to the end of the reign doesn't work either. People who are known to be alive in Unas's reign are known to be still alive during the reign of Teti I, first king of the sixth dynasty. The big news of the period, still remembered a thousand years later, is the Teti was murdered by his own bodyguard.

Coragyps

by drowning?

Azathoth

Aside from records written at the time the flood was supposed to be happening,do they even try to address the fact,that reducing the world's population to eight people would have a slight effect on any culture from that time period?

There's no way any civilization could go through a flood like that and come out the other side intact.

After all,how fast do you think it would take,even optimistically,to get enough people to populate Egypt the way it is known to have been in ancient times.How many people to build a pyramid?

Not only Egypt is supposed to have been populated at this time,but China,Babylon and every other civilization in the world.

Actually,with the babel story,the guy on the abc board can't really have any civilization older than that particular point,which is later than the flood,since the different language and writing systems were supposed to have been created then.

Of course,his dilemma is that there is ample evidence of cultures before then.Like the aforementioned Egyptian records.

And some archaeological sites come with examples of the writing used by the people who lived there,and naturally they are different in different places.So claiming that they were in existance before babel and the flood wouldn't work,either.

There's so many massive holes in the flood story,it's really hard to know where to start.

I would suspect that he might try to attack the veracity of the records written then.It's literally his only defense.

Shinobi

Hi kinetekade. Yes that’s the forum alright. Sorry I don’t remember you. Hmmmm there’s a distinct lack of sceptical atheist opinion in their religious threads, which are numerous and top the very heights of absurdity. I mean “Demons and Angels”? Huh? Shouldn’t anyone that believes in monsters be sedated and put in a rubber room? These guys are the fundamentalists of the fundamentalists. I usually stayed out of the “Athletes shooting the breeze” forum because it is so full of nauseating religious drivel, but I’ve decided to have some fun with the fundies. If you go to the thread you can see my latest smack that I just posted:

A few common parts of different folk stories proves nothing, we need like to see real historical records. Many of them pre-date when the great flood supposedly happened, such as the Sumerian and Babylonian myths. How is it possible to have a folk tale about something that hasn't happened yet? It seems that these pre-Christian great flood myths were the inspiration for the Christian great flood myth.

In Chinese and Egyptian historical records we have surviving records of such mundane things as purchase orders and accident reports. It's surprising to see no-one took any interest in recording a flood that wipes put all the earths inhabitants. I guess the ancient historians were too busy noting sales recepts. Is there a large gap in our historical records? that would be assumed if reconstructing every city and populating the earth again would have occurred.

Now about the world's population descending from one family and populating the entire earth and bringing about a myriad of racial characteristics in a few thousand years. Is there any evidence for this at all? No, folk tales are not evidence, is there any scientific biological, genetic or historical findings that support this notion?

The genesis story is full of contradictions. There are opposing accounts of the time Noah entered the ark(7:7-10), how many kinds of animals he took onto it (6:19-20, 7:2-3, 7:8-9, 7:15) , how long the flood lasted (7:17, 7:24, 8:3) , and if everyone actually died in the flood. (7:21-23, 6:4) One of those stories states that giants survived.

I don't suppose you believe in giants Yu Yevon and Venom?

http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/forum...c=1&PHPSESSID=

If any atheists want to go over there and give them a good bitch-slap please by all means do.

I’ll probably get banned for using rational argument as well, doesn’t really bother me if I do. (It will be a moral victory )

………..Just checked the thread again.. Oooooohh venom’s talking tough on me now:

Lol, every single one of these questions has been answered before. It takes about 2 minutes to do.

We will gladly tear this to shreds, but were not going to waste our time if your just here to mock something your clearly ignorant of. Next time, ask and leave out the juvenile conclusions.


I say, bring it….

Incidentally kinetekade I once posted a critique of high protein diets and defended myself well against the few actually reasonable responses that people gave me, (most was appeal to ridicule, and I called them on it.)
My last few posts on that thread were deleted, as well as other peoples comments about how well I handled myself in the argument.

kinetekade

Careful now Shinobi... according to them, you're in danger of violating their forum rules. Those warnings are awful familiar; they posted something similar after I wrote my last argument about the Trinity. By the way, they remade those rules right after I was banned. Coincidence? I doubt it... And notice that now any Biblical criticism will instantly be regarded as "mockery" and consequently: a forum violation.

If you'd like to really get on their nerves, the next time they make one of those long, colorful posts, surf on over to Google, copy-paste some of the sentences and do a search. To improve your odds, specifically target the sentences without spelling mistakes. Show everyone on ABC how many of those "scholarly" posts are simply plagiarized, dime-a-dozen apologetics. Show them that THEY are in violation of their own forum rules by breaking copyright laws. How do you suppose they put together those "Bible studies?"

Shinobi

Here's the smug git replying to my accusation that genesis has contradictions. What do people make of this? I got the contradictions off skeptics annotated bible.

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra.html

It's true about the first point, I didn't inclide the passage number that contradicts. (7:11-13)

Here's what he said.
"I see no contradiction. Allow me to explain:

Gen 7:7-10
7And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons - wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. 8Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, 9There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah. 10And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.


Where is the opposing account of the time he entered the ark? Where does it say exactly when he did? Your arguement is without justification.

Gen 6:19-20
19And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. 20Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive

Gen 7:2-3
2Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. 3Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

There is a distinction here. Some beasts were not meant to be taken by twos. God clearly outlined the ones who should be taken 7 at a time, we know they include fowl and other "unclean" beasts.

There is absolutely no contradiciton here.

Gen 7:17
17And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

24And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

3And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.


If you actually read the scripture (rather than cutting and pasting from some anti-Christian website) you will see that the water was being raised for 40 days but the waters prevailed (remained) for 150 days.

No contradiction! Next!

Gen 7:21-23
21And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: 22All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

4There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown

First off, the two verses do not even remotely contradict each other. Every creature that was not on the ark during the flood died, the scripture is clear on that.

Now about giants.

The word "giant" is translated from the origional Hebrew (nephiyl nephil) meaning a feller, that is, a bully or tyrant: giant.

Again, no contradiciton.

Thanks for trying though. "


Even if my accusation of contradcitions is invalid, they have still yet to tear my other arguments to shreds as I was so promised. (meaning copy & paste from some whacko website)

If there's one thing worse than a whacked out crazy fundie, is a big muscular bully whacked out crazy fundie

Jayjay

And don't forget to be polite and humble. That really ticks them off.

ps418

I think that people in developed countries have an underapreciation of floods, because flood control measures have made them so much smaller than they once were. That, plus the fact that far fewer of us live on flood plains than before. Because of their fertility, flood plains were always attractive real estate for agrarian (spelling?) groups, as were the ash-rich areas around volcanoes. Like a divine comedy with humans as the unwitting victims-- the best places to grow crops are also the best places to get killed by a flood or eruption.

NASA's Earth Observatory has some landsat images of some amazing floods. Check out the images of flooding in Zambia, along the Zambezi River, and along the Caprivi Strip. To a local group living on those flood plains when the river breaches its banks, it might as well be a global flood.

Patrick

Jayjay

In addition, the ancient people's didn't know the cause of flooding... to most of them, it was probably gods' doing. If you see water level rising dramatically over the course of few days, it doesn't take much imagination to consider what might happen if it keeps rising until even the highest hills are submerged. A scary thought!

Shinobi

Can anyone make an attack on the last points he made regarding biblical contradictions?

If not I might have to concede that point about those particular biblical contradictions. At least untill I get further information.

Still, I have the other arguments that no-one has yet attacked, so I'm not left with an empty hand. This is what it was:

"A few common parts of different folk stories proves nothing, we need like to see real historical records. Many of them pre-date when the great flood supposedly happened, such as the Sumerian and Babylonian myths. How is it possible to have a folk tale about something that hasn't happened yet? It seems that these pre-Christian great flood myths were the inspiration for the Christian great flood myth.

In Chinese and Egyptian historical records we have surviving records of such mundane things as purchase orders and accident reports. It's surprising to see no-one took any interest in recording a flood that wipes put all the earths inhabitants. I guess the ancient historians were too busy noting sales recepts. Is there a large gap in our historical records? that would be assumed if reconstructing every city and populating the earth again would have occurred.

Now about the world's population descending from one family and populating the entire earth and bringing about a myriad of racial characteristics in a few thousand years. Is there any evidence for this at all? No, folk tales are not evidence, is there any scientific biological, genetic or historical findings that support this notion?

The genesis story is full of contradictions. There are opposing accounts of the time Noah entered the ark(7:7-10), how many kinds of animals he took onto it (6:19-20, 7:2-3, 7:8-9, 7:15) , how long the flood lasted (7:17, 7:24, 8:3) , and if everyone actually died in the flood. (7:21-23, 6:4) One of those stories states that giants survived.

I don't suppose you believe in giants Yu Yevon and Venom?"

It's funny, they boasted of ripping my arguments to shreds, then proceded to ignore the bulk of my arguments and attack the easiest target.

I'll probably be banned from the forum for arguing, I don't care much, I'm sick of the weird fundy babble on that site.