Comic Strips

If the Black Sea theory is correct, it wasn't even a global flood, but it would have seemed like the end of the world for anyone caught in it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis

In the Bible's offense, it probably wasn't even originally a flood story.

Yes, it’s not only rain even as per Quran

“At length, behold! there came our Command, and the fountains of the earth gushed forth.” — Holy Qur’an, 11:40

and

“O Earth! swallow up your water, and O Sky! withhold your rain! and the water abated and the matter was ended. The Ark rested on Mount Judi.” — Holy Qur’an, 11:44

This relates to the bible concept of firmament, flat earth and separation of waters, as in genesis when it says god separated waters above and below.

The nomads knew wells, rain, islands, tides and flooding rivers, so the world they conceptualised was one where God moved water above and below to reveal dry land. As such in the story it seemed logically consistent to allow massive amounts of water to come from above and below returning the world in what they considered a previous, erased state to reboot it.

I think I figured the math on the assumption that Noah's kids brought significant others with and it was technically possible to avoid parent-child pairings so long as each unrelated male female combination was utilized, which is to say they screwed each others wives in addition to their own. Not like the bible gives a fuck about parent child incest babies, that was Lot's whole character arc.

The animals, on the other hand, those are all shit out of luck.

Right? Like people in the local area may have been terrible, but there were other people.

It wouldn't. It would just break apart like if was hit with a huge mallet.

It's illegal to teach religion in US schools unless it's specifically a class about religion. Which typically happens only in college

The Old Testament doesn’t do a lot to give the idea that god is “benevolent” or “kind”

Cruelty was kinda the schtick

Another take: God is an asshole and modeled men after himself. Explains a lot if you think about human history, doesn't it?

And of course there is no god, only delusions to keep the population under check. Humans are simply assholes by nature.

I am being pedantic here, but "cruelty" doesn't seem like quite the right word. If you made something, like a drawing or a story, and then got rid of it, the point isn't to cause suffering, but rather to throw it away. "Indifference" would fit better. And... either way, a Creator sorta by definition has the legal right to do so, with their own work? "Omnipotent" there being a relative word, that the ancient people's would not have been able to distinguish b/t forms like your more common garden-variety space alien (e.g. 2001 Odyssey) all the way up to external-reality entity (e.g. The Matrix).

Anyway my point is that it is people who are the ones that are cruel, b/c we are no better than anyone else, yet we delight in causing suffering. The only other animal I have ever heard of who shares that trait is the Chimpanzee, who btw also just so happens to be the closest living relative that humans have on this planet. \s on that being a coincidence ofc, when we share ~99% genetic similarity.

Here's the thing, society formed around agrarian settlements. What do you need for crops, livestock, AND people? What makes transporting your goods easier? If you said water, you get a prize. Many of our settlements, both modern and historic, were near water sources. Water sources flood. Inevitably, water sources experience thousand-year flood events, and completely swamp a huge area, maybe even wiping out one or more settlements. As you start going back in history, you also start dealing with glacial dam rupture events, which also almost certainly scoured away everything downstream and would have seemingly come out of nowhere at all.

The phenomenon of the global flood myth is really just that people live near water, and when you live near water, shit happens.