Atheists & Agnostics
Related: About this forumNoah's ark
Inquiry, and not meant as meta.
How many of you missed the genocide aspect of the biblical tale of Noah's Ark? (assuming you read it)
Can you imagine anyone reading that story, and missing the implication of drowning everyone except one little family?
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)I never missed the implication, that a cleansing was coming and most of the folks didn't get the memo.
Flood mythology is fascinating to me, said to be among those common to many cultures and one can't help but wonder if the Noah story was based on other cultures' tales, and if these were based on an actual event, like the "Black Sea Deluge".
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Everything in the Bible is...practically. It's a most unoriginal anthology.
Besides, early on most cities and civilizations sprang up around rivers, they being natural highways. So, let's see.... We need a big disaster people will understand... What could we use? I know! A flood!
Thus a flood disaster endeth up in many a mythology.
Exultant Democracy
(6,594 posts)ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)and all that crap
Rainforestgoddess
(436 posts)It was okay for god to kill little babies to "start fresh" but it's just a metaphor, not meant to be taken seriously..... :-P
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)They watched that stupid show about "finding" it a number of years ago with great anticipation.
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)Especially when you take into account god mid controlling the Pharoah to act the way he was.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)I'd say that I also can't believe someone is so obsessed with this group that they monitor it LIKE A HAWK to report on its activities elsewhere, but I know that happens, so meh.
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)This is a meta free zone. Genuine question to see if anyone missed the genocide proposition of the myth.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)And truth when they say it's truth. Regardless of the believer or the story.
(FYI, they'll say it's a myth or allegorical whenever they are uncomfortable with the story and/or its repercussions.)
LostOne4Ever
(9,288 posts)Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)None of it was understandable as written, nor fully comprehensible as metaphor, because god. God on the other hand, being unity, couldn't really be described other than by what god wasn't. Jewish scholars puzzled over that mess for centuries, until Spinoza, who they could at least comprehend enough to expel.
onager
(9,356 posts)And they're so cute!
Almost as cute as the Bad Atheist Dance Team over there. Moving across the ideological dance floor with all the grace, charm and subtlety of Fred and Ginger.
Fred Thompson and Ginger Baker.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)I am so upset about this I may never post in the HRM Interfaith Yachting Forum again.
Just Wow.
Plus I always though the story of Noah was really about how we all get to go out for Ice Cream on summer weekend nights.
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)In fact, I saw it as much worse than any genocide that has happened since. It wasn't even "speciecide" since it wasn't just the humans. It was probably one of the first stories that I heard as a child, and the first one that, on further inspection, was the worst.
temporary311
(955 posts)Always found it repugnant. There was another from Sunday school that was rather horrific, too. The one with the bald dude who, when some kids make fun of his chrome dome, gets god to have some bears eat the kids. Like, wtf?
LostOne4Ever
(9,288 posts)Mass murder was never so cute!
yortsed snacilbuper
(7,939 posts)Yes, this guy!
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)What the FUCK is wrong with that dude
LostOne4Ever
(9,288 posts)...
No, he would not have it so; he would save half a dozen and try the race over again. He was not able to foresee that it would go rotten again, for he is only the Far-Sighted One in his advertisements
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Letter V
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Letter VI
Providentially. That is the word. For the fly had not been left behind by accident. No, the hand of Providence was in it. There are no accidents. All things that happen, happen for a purpose. They are foreseen from the beginning of time, they are ordained from the beginning of time. From the dawn of Creation the Lord had foreseen that Noah, being alarmed and confused by the invasion of the prodigious brevet fossils, would prematurely fly to sea unprovided with a certain invaluable disease. He would have all the other diseases, and could distribute them among the new races of men as they appeared in the world, but he would lack one of the very best -- typhoid fever; a malady which, when the circumstances are especially favorable, is able to utterly wreck a patient without killing him; for it can restore him to his feet with a long life in him, and yet deaf, dumb, blind, crippled, and idiotic. The housefly is its main disseminator, and is more competent and more calamitously effective than all the other distributors of the dreaded scourge put together. And so, by foreordination from the beginning of time, this fly was left behind to seek out a typhoid corpse and feed upon its corruptions and gaum its legs with germs and transmit them to the re-peopled world for permanent business. From that one housefly, in the ages that have since elapsed, billions of sickbeds have been stocked, billions of wrecked bodies sent tottering about the earth, and billions of cemeteries recruited with the dead.
-Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain.
Samuel Clemens explained it way better than I could ever hope to explain it.
OriginalGeek
(12,132 posts)Gays stole rainbows from them. Rainbows were god's promise that he wouldn't flood the world again* and the gays are using it for their own nefarious purpose.
*Side note: he's not doing a very good job of keeping his promise with the global warming and such.
Heather MC
(8,084 posts)The story was taught as if Noah went door to door trying to save people. And they mocked him until rain came and "swept them all away"
So I believed the people died by their own choice.
I never gave it any thought again until recently.