God chose a flood to kill the unrighteous, why not a virus?

[relativetruth]

We could still have the same story.

Only this time Noah and his family have the god-given vaccine to inoculate them plus all the animals they like.
They could also have used porcupine spikes as needles for injection.

Using this approach then future atheists could not just say snarkly 'where is the evidence for a worldwide pandemic killing most animals on earth but still keeping the various 'kinds' intact'.

God missed a trick there, I think.

But then I don't play the infinite dimensional chess that he seems to play!! 

[snotnosetommy]

Because the humans who wrote down the story never foresaw the development of science to the point where it could disprove their story?

[ThatZenoGuy]

Why didn't he just vaporize everything that was evil with god magic?, sparring any possible innocents...

[jdawg70]

Why didn't he just vaporize everything that was evil with god magic?, sparring any possible innocents...

Somethingsomethingmysteriouswayssomethingsomething

[One Above All]

Because people back then hadn't even heard of viruses or bacteria. It was all demons and/or a god's (or multiple gods') will.

[ThatZenoGuy]

Because people back then hadn't even heard of viruses or bacteria. It was all demons and/or a god's (or multiple gods') will.

Heck, some people thought the black plague was caused by bad smells.

[jaimehlers]

As for why a god wouldn't use a virus or a bacteria as an eradicating plague, it's because the potency of biological weapons make nukes seem like a bubble-gum pop by comparison.

[Mrjason]

viruses aren't nearly as impressive. Just don't have that wrath-of-the-almighty edge to them.

[ThatZenoGuy]

viruses aren't nearly as impressive. Just don't have that wrath-of-the-almighty edge to them.

Why not raise an army of the dead to kill everyone even more painfully, that makes god sound even more bad-ass.
Heck, why not add in dragons, wizards, hobbits and call it a novel!

[neopagan]

Why would the authors of this clumsy tale choose a flood?  Why not fire, ravenous demon hordes from the bowels of the Earth, total famine?

The more I think about it, I really don't get what the goat herder(s) who came up with this nonsense had in mind to teach the gullible.  That god does nasty stuff if you are bad?  It didn't even teach that lesson accurately (for example - what did the animals and plants do?).  It's just weird 

[ThatZenoGuy]

Why would the authors of this clumsy tale choose a flood?  Why not fire, ravenous demon hordes from the bowels of the Earth, total famine?

The more I think about it, I really don't get what the goat herder(s) who came up with this nonsense had in mind to teach the gullible.  That god does nasty stuff if you are bad?  It didn't even teach that lesson accurately (for example - what did the animals and plants do?).  It's just weird

Isn't it obvious?
They sinned 9_9.

How did they sin?
Doesn't matter, god says they sinned, so they must have sinned...9_9

[neopagan]

^^^ I know that, but isn't it ironic "sin" suddenly became a weally, weally big deal when the Moses character decided to start coming up with a bunch of goofy laws for his "chosen people"?  It's not like the people had some common ancestral knowledge of a worldwide flood.  Going with their numbers, there were only "rules" from YHWH for everyone from about 1300 BCE onward. Everyone before (Adam, Noah, Abraham...) depended on individual revelation from YHWH (the best hide and seek player ever) - or died in their "sins" (whatever those were).

Moses (for the sake of argument) made up this tale about how YHWH killed off everyone in the past with a flood... so now, listen up!  As the stories go, the people were so disinterested, they kept going back to their old gods time and again - even at the foot of the damn mountain when Moses went to take a couple tablets and call YHWH in the morning.  YHWH was a boring blowhard to them, it seems (or a crock of shit they could see through even then).

[Jontom10]

Perhaps it's all bollocks or something !?!

[relativetruth]

Isn't it obvious?
They sinned 9_9.

How did they sin?
Doesn't matter, god says they sinned, so they must have sinned...9_9

I have always wanted to know exactly what sins the Canaanites did (that the Israelites did not do). It must have been pretty bad for God to sanction Moses' lot to rape and slaughter.

Or maybe I am over simplifying things?

[ThatZenoGuy]

Isn't it obvious?
They sinned 9_9.

How did they sin?
Doesn't matter, god says they sinned, so they must have sinned...9_9

I have always wanted to know exactly what sins the Canaanites did (that the Israelites did not do). It must have been pretty bad for God to sanction Moses' lot to rape and slaughter.

Or maybe I am over simplifying things?

They probably did something stupidly harmless, like lust, or eat shellfish...

[Graybeard]

Why would the authors of this clumsy tale choose a flood?

There really was a flood. We have them today. The area flooded was by the Euphrates. The Jews picked it up from the Babylonians whilst in exile: the Babylonians got it from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which again exaggerated a flood that would have been pretty disastrous at the time. (A story of a flood - exaggerated to a folktale - is repeated in many other civilisations - the Chinese have one.)

It is a successful story as everyone can relate to it.

The question that bothers me is "Did the people at the time really believe it to be true, did they believe it to be true only as part of a belief system and false when thinking outside the system or did they take it for what it is, a folk tale? Probably all three.

[Add Homonym]

There are a few ways of answering this question, depending on what you think it means. If there was a God, could God find a better way, than exterminating the plant kingdom, and saturating the soils with salt? Yes, God could simply snap his fingers, and all bad people would die, due to God effects. Makes for a less dramatic story.

Gen 4
[1] In the old days, the world was full of corrupt people, except for Noah and his family.
[2] God didn't like the corrupt people, so he made them all die. This left Noah, who's job it was to repopulate the four corners of the Earth.
[3] LORD God said, I shall help you repopulate the Earth, and shall make Noah multiply by one hundred thousand, and his wife and children.
[4] So, it was done. The world was full of Noahs.

Gen 5
[1] Noahs had a beer, and had a party with one thousand other Noahs. He had sex with his daughters. He sold some of his sons to other Noahs, to be sex slaves, and then beat some of his wives.
[2] After a while the other Noahs gave him the shits, so he decided to see how many he could kill in a single day.
[3] God came to him and asked, Why have you killed so many Noahs? They were to help fill the Earth.
[4] Noah said, I am the only true Noah.

Mind you, I think a skilled writer could make something of another story.

[sun_king]

I have always wanted to know exactly what sins the Canaanites did (that the Israelites did not do). It must have been pretty bad for God to sanction Moses' lot to rape and slaughter.
Or maybe I am over simplifying things?

What was the sin of every animal on earth (except the selected pairs) ?

What did the beaver do?

[ParkingPlaces]

The makers-up of things needed a disaster that people could imagine. Germs wouldn't hack it. Then or now. Look at how many people don't understand germs today. (I gotta use lots of antibacterial soap' cause, you know, bacteria is bad!). Floods people understood. At least on a smaller scale. And even primitives could extrapolate. They could understand more water+bad. Toss in the fact the god boy was doing in the animals, including the big meanie ones, which meant he was, like, real real strong and stuff, and the story probably came across as pretty impressive, and scary.

God should have had Stephen King born earlier so he could write something with better literary qualities, and perhaps even have it a little more realistic. But I guess this god guy just can't foresee such problems.

[MadBunny]

The whole problem of the flood goes away if you don't try to pretend it's literal.
If you simply treat it as a morality play on the need to be prepared, and or the need to listen to authority then it works just fine.

It's not a particularly *nice* story considering it's the destruction of all mankind, all animalkind, all plant life and fish.  But then again, the girl with the dancing shoes doesn't have a very nice ending either.

[relativetruth]

The whole problem of the flood goes away if you don't try to pretend it's literal.
If you simply treat it as a morality play on the need to be prepared, and or the need to listen to authority then it works just fine.

It's not a particularly *nice* story considering it's the destruction of all mankind, all animalkind, all plant life and fish.  But then again, the girl with the dancing shoes doesn't have a very nice ending either.

But whoose authority and which morality should you accept?

The whole problem of the flood goes away if you don't try to pretend it's literal.

But, if the Bible was always meant to be allogorical which learned scholars does one choose to help one decide upon the bible's  real message?

[ParkingPlaces]

But, if the Bible was always meant to be allogorical which learned scholars does one choose to help one decide upon the bible's  real message?

The method used by most christians is to find the guy who is saying what you like. He'll be the one that is right…

To us atheists, they are all wrong, and, technically speaking, there isn't even one that is more right than another. We may agree that some are less wrong, but they still all wrong indeed. (By less wrong, I mean things like believers who know that there was no flood. But as long as they continue to insist that the bible is essentially true, or that there is a god, or whatever, they are still wrong.)

[MadBunny]

The whole problem of the flood goes away if you don't try to pretend it's literal.
If you simply treat it as a morality play on the need to be prepared, and or the need to listen to authority then it works just fine.

But whoose authority and which morality should you accept?

Doesn't really matter.  One would presume that the person telling the story to credulous people will find something/someone to fill in.

The whole problem of the flood goes away if you don't try to pretend it's literal.

But, if the Bible was always meant to be allegorical which learned scholars does one choose to help one decide upon the bible's  real message?

What real message?  If you take a collection of fairy tales, you'll find some good stuff and some bad stuff, the message you take from them kind of depends on you.  Is Goldilocks a cautionary tale about wandering places you shouldn't go, or is it a horrific  home invasion that could have turned terribly wrong?