The flood myths
 

Flood myths are all around the world, on every continent. The one from the bible is just an ancient hebrew myth, it resembles a summerian myth.
In all the myths there are simmilar elements : gods being angry at men ,in some of them one man is warned and escapes with a boat, waters cover all the land, then the survivors escape on the highest peaks when the water receeds.
Also many of them tell about other "creations" where the people were "bad" and the world was destroyed and reborn. Acording to the maya we are number 5
How do you think these myths appeared ? Was there a great flood , what could have caused it ?


Here are some links to flood myths :

http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/titania.htm
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_%28mythology%29

I wish I could remember where I saw it, but I remember seeing a story about a small village discovered off the coast of the Turkish side of the Black Sea under several hundred meters of water. Apparently fire pits, etc. were stil easily visible. The theory that was being advanced was that there was an ice dam between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea at the end of the last ice age. The ice retreated leaving the ice dam in place for several hundreds of years and people occupied the newly-vacated land. The ice dam crumbled at some point, releasing a huge torrent of water. I can imagine that would be a relatively common occurrence at the end of an ice age as lakes formed and ice dams released, especially in mountainous regions.

Since it's such a good story, I can also imagine everyone telling their neighbors about it.

The myth is also in South and North America .
- there was a great flood in one place and the myth spread around - then the myth must be really old, maybe from the time when the continents were toghether ?
- there was a universal flood - I think this is the better explanation, because all the myths talk about very much water covering all the land.
They found south american tobacco in some egyptian mummies, maybe indeed there was an advanced civilization before us, and it was destroyed by the flood, and the survivors all over tho world made the myth

Pai Mei, I think that a series of smaller floods is a much better explanation than one single one when there's no geological evidence to support the latter, unless you want to count rising sea levels and river levels at the end of the last ice age. Those could indeed be seen as a global flood. Also, there's no reason to assume that if these were local floods that they all occurred at the same time. A series of major floods over 1000 years would easily leave the same stories.

Humans didn't exist when all the continents were together. We weren't even a promising species. That's the time of the dinosaur - and not even the really cool ones like T. Rex. We're talking a couple of billion years ago (roughly). Your suggestion that the myth dates to then is stretching a little.

I've never heard of South American tobacco being found with Egyptian mummies. Can you tell me which tombs or who found it? It doesn't seem plausible to me.

I think you guys have covered it, in my mind anyway. Sea levels were much lower during the last ice age and much more of the earths land mass was exposed. There may have been several ice dams, one at the gibraltar straight, which would have held back the atlantic and the whole mediteranean sea area would be dry. Another at the straights of bospherus, which would have the whole black sea area dry. Sea levels rise world wide, the water breaks through the ice dams, and thus a world wide flood myth is born.

http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/117_toke.shtml
Here is an article about the egyptians.
No "scientist" wants to ask the question "how ?" ,they even try to make it look like a false discovery.

Yeah, we've got an unrepeated experiment that's not accepted by the experts with no verification in the historical record. The Egyptians wrote about EVERYTHING. They were one of the first societies of scribes. I find it impossible to believe that they would have recorded mundane details like pay scales and recipes but somehow forget to mention the pan-global civilization that they did business with. This isn't proof - it might be with more work, but it's not proof.

And scientists get paid to ask "how" along with "why".

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It was the height of the Ice Age, when sea levels were 400 feet lower than today, and there was a lot more land to go around.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/warnings/waterworld/

Scientists are no longer listened to, and lose their jobs, when they talk "nonsense". One of the first who talked such things was Copernicus
It was not a single experiment there were many. I found out about it from a documentary on Discovery channel, now I searched and found that link

Or the current regime in power, just pays the scientists to say what they want. You dont have to be a scientist to see whats going on, just open your eyes and look around.:oogle:

In all seriousness, does this thread belong in Paranoia? I'm starting to get that sense, but I'm certainly willing to listen to counterarguements (see how I'm not a part of the establishment?).

The fact that none of my friends who work at the Field Museum make these kinds of complaints or accusations leads me to believe that Paranoia may be a better place for this discussion.

Jazz, it has the potential for Paranoia, but in truth the geologic record in the Middle East documents a "great flood" in the region that would coincide with theologic estimates of when the flood occured. Given that Judiac history could only consider the extent of their travels, a world flood is merely an assumption on our part. Scientific investigation has proven that there was a great flood in the region.

My two cents worth :)

I think that would be like stating the god debate threads needs to go in paranoia

ie...I dont agree

If I remember correctly, the original creation myths (including Christianity) are all based on the idea of a world of water from which land rises.

The idea of the flood suggests a new beginning.

In Christianity the flood is the second covenant with God (i.e. Hey Noah... I kind of screwed up with humanity. I need a do over. I like you though and I like my animals. Here's the deal, you save the animals in and you get to be my chosen one. Deal?"

They then "high five" and Noah asks "what is a cubit?" :)

:lol: beautiful.

"Riiiiight"

To clarify, my thoughts about whether to move this thread or not didn't come from the religious aspect of the conversation but rather from the "scientists afraid to speak" portion - Egyptian tobacco, humans in Pangaea, universal flood, etc. In my experience, it's difficult to mix faith and science in an intelligent and mature manner.

We'll see where this takes us.

A Bill Cosby great, doncha think? :thumbsup:

...And people deny there being a distinct anti-Christian air to TFP.

There's nothing anti-Christian in here. Do you have anything to add about the flood myths? Or maybe you're just in here out of anti-atheist resentment?

It's entirely possible that the flood myths are real, and it's entirely possible that they're not. I remember reading somewhere that they (scientists? historians? dunno) theorize that the Atlantian Empire fell because of a massive tectonic plate shifting. I don't think there is really any evidence to support it, but a global flood could also explain it seeing as they were said to be sea-faring (thus many of their largest cities would be near sea level). Actually, the global flood could have been caused if there was a tectonic shift that moved a pole closer to the equator. The sudden melt would raise sea levels quickly, and also dump millions of gallons of fresh waters into the sea, killing of many fish and lowering the global temperature.

Its not just Christianity, its anything that doesnt have a plausible scientific explanation. This really stifles the creativity of this board, very closed minded, and not even open to the realm of new possibilities. Unless they're scientificly plausible. Sad really...

Yeah that Tilted Literature section is 100% non-fiction. :orly: How about you stop threadjacking? This is about the plausibility of the flood, not the frustrations of the supposedly oppressed Christian minority.

Please Will, continue with your flood discussion....I was simply commenting on a post in this thread. Is that alright???

1. People tell stories about things around them.

2. Many stories are embellished (myths)

3. Floods are common in many parts of the world.

That's how I see it, anyway. I don't see any reason, unless there's legitimate scientific evidence, to even suspect a world wide flood.

No one here has said a single thing against Christians. In fact the opening post mentioned various flood myths, not simply the Judeo-Christian version. So the thread itself isn't even necessarily a "Christian" thread if you must apply a label. The thread exists to discuss various world wide flood myths. That is the only thing I see happening here. Just because someone doesn't believe the way you do doesn't make them "anti-Christian." I don't believe in Shiva, but I'm not "anti-Hindu." I simply have a differing world view. I can respect their beliefs while still engaging them in debate.

We have an entire Paranoia Forum dedicated to discussing things that "don't have a plausible scientific explanation."

*Brings your attention to posts number 15, 16 and 17*

I just thought I'd point that out, as you seemed to miss it. I suppose people don't see it because, typically, one is blinded to that which they actively participate in.

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I understand that, but the flood myths arent paranoia(in my mind), and neither is a galactic alignment, with cultural myths associated with it. Its the overall method of response that sometimes bothers me. Members whose views, opinions, or beliefs are not that of the majority, often are subtly ridiculed by others. I have suggested that members state their own opinions without attacking those of another, but many enjoy their ability to proselytize unabated by moderation.

Shame on some of us for requiring reasonable evidence. How dare we?

Paranoia is probably not the best name for that forum, but I can't think of anything better. I would agree that the flood myths don't really belong there, seeing as how there is physical evidence of some large floods which those stories are probably based off of. That said, there is no evidence whatsoever for a worldwide flood.

As for galactic alignment having some metaphysical meaning or even physical effect leading to an end-of-the-world scenario or any other similar prophecy...that is exactly the type of thing Tilted Paranoia was created to discuss. Like I said, it's probably not the best name for the forum, but "Tilted There-is-no-scientific-or-logical-reason-to-believe-this-to-be-true-but-I-want-to-discuss-whether-it-may-be-anyway" is just a bit cumbersome. If you have recommendations, feel free to PM them to me and I will seriously consider them.

As for members ridiculing others, please use the report post link when you feel that is the case (not when someone says something which may offend someone, but when someone says something that is genuinely attacking another member). Reporting posts sends an e-mail to all the moderators and calls more people to look at the situation and make a decision about it. That said, I personally don't see anything wrong with someone telling another person that what they are saying makes absolutely no sense using the well-established and proven methods we, as a civilization, have for determining what is likely to be true.

Infinite, we participated in a little back and forth in humor. It is allowed in my relationship with my higher being.

Did you read Post #13?:rolleyes:

I think you're off topic Will, better watch that thread hijacking....:)

I always wondered why people wore those pants.

::sigh:: Once again, there is scientific, geologic evidence of a "great flood" in the area of the Middle East that coincides with the theologic estimation of the event, based upon the historical references of the time.

It happened. We are free to ascribe any meaning we wish to, but the great flood did happen.

Very interesting thread. I enjoy reading these types of things.

I'm going to have to go with "You're missing the crux of the insult" but, as I stated, people are typically blind to that which they actively participate in, so I'm just preaching to the proverbial choir. I'll just keep this in mind for future reference ;)

Oh, I don't believe in the number 13. Therefore, I ignore anything that corresponds to it.

I did not open this thread to prove the bible wrong. I am not an atheist, I am more into buddhism. The existance of all the other flood myths only proves that the one in the bible is true.
I believe there was a global flood, and it happened fast, that is why all the myths tell about boats and very few survivors. What else could have caused all the myths ?
I wrote about the egyptians and tobacco just to show that history could be inaccurate. 10000 years ago they say we were living in caves. But the earth is very old, look how far we got in just 10000 years.
Also there are traces of nuclear explosions in ancient India and they also have a poem about them. Troy was just a fantasy story until someone decided to go digg it up.

http://s8int.com/atomic1.html


New theory of mine :
10000 years ago or earlyer there were some advanced civilizations, and they were destroyed by some flood, not all the people on earth experienced it, then the flood myths appeared. Simple :)

As the poster of #15 I have to ask if you have a sense of humour or is this just a blind spot when it comes to your belief system. Seriously.

I believe politicophile summed up the three posts perfectly.

Since many of us "anti-Christian" types seem to have missed the "crux" of the insult perhaps you would care to point out where there was an insult because I can't seem to find one.

Back to the thread itself... my point was that many creation myths start with a world of water. It is held by biblical scholars that the creation myth in Genesis rises from other creation myths that precede it.

I am speculating that The Flood myth, which in the Bible represents the second covenant with God (the first being with Adam, the third with Abraham and the final with Noah) represents God, starting things over. Blank slate (with some notable exceptions).

While there is some debate amongst scholars, it is felt that the Bible is all myth and etiologies until it gets to the book of Joshua (some feel it should go as far back as Deuteronomy). To me, there is no need to be a literalist when it comes to the Torah or the Pentateuch (the first five books). The symbolism is there in the writing. Do you really need to believe that there was a Noah or Adam and Eve or a tower of babel, etc? And if so why?

To me they are great myths that we tell ourselves. There are great lessons to be learned and, frankly, the foundation of western civilization's moral and judicial code stems from them.

If you are offended by this take on things, all I can suggest is that you need to believe in your religion a little bit harder. Because, what I am writing is hardly new and it is hardly faith shaking.

"God is happy, sabu! He plays with us." -Out of Africa.

The layer all over the earth from the most recent catastrophic meteor event is more cohesive.

Alrighty then! I'll say it, Atlantis! So there...take that! I'd much rather discuss the unknown than the known, whether its a flood myth, galactic alignment myths, or the existence of Atlantis. The reference to nicotine & cocaine found in Egyptian mummies brings us to the realization that 3000 years ago trade 'may' have existed between South America & Africa.

http://www.science-frontiers.com/onl...=1&zoom_sort=0

I've heard theories that Altantis was everywhere from Antarctica, to the Himalayas, and everywhere in between.The antarctica theory proposes that it was in a temperate climate 10,000 years ago but moved to its present location. I reject that, continents just dont move that fast, at least to our current level of understanding.The island of Thera in the Agean sea, is also a candidate, the modern island of Santorini. I also reject that because this island simply isnt big enough. The written account by Plato states...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis
Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your state in our histories. But one of them exceeds all the rest in greatness and valour. For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire... (from Timaeus)

If Atlantis was larger than Libya(north Africa) and Asia(probably Asia Minor) then its a continent, or continents, that exist past the straights of Gibralter, in the Atlantic. 10,000 years ago more land would have been exposed, especially in equatorial and temperate regions(I'll exclude ice covered regions), maybe 400 ft lower than today. A civilization could have existed in South & Central America, which traded with the Egyptians, but all evidence has since been covered by water. The bimini road may or may not be evidence of that. During the next ice age, when sea levels are lower, we may actually find out.

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p...rix/carib0.gif

I don't think this "angle" has been mentioned as a possible source of widespread, though still not totally global, flooding.

This came to my mind since I remembered the story in NG along with some nice supporting pics of huge dunes along certain shorelines around the world that can only be explained by huge sudden floods:

From NG:
Scientists have found traces of an asteroid-collision event that they say would have created a giant tsunami that swept around the Earth several times, inundating everything except the mountains 3.5 billion years ago. The coastline of the continents was changed drastically and almost all life on land was exterminated.

....and this is the link to that page http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...8_tsunami.html I didn't search this link to see if the interesting dune pics are shown, or if the connection is made to specifically identified impact sites that likely caused those dunes, but those things were in the magazine a couple months ago.

I later added this for my "edit"
If some astute ancient stone age woman noticed some subtle physical clues of these dune structures and noticed that they look like the little sand ripples on the beach caused by small waves and she figured out a huge flood that they did not actually experience or have any record of in language or written or pictures etc may have occured, that could be a scary thought and lead to mythic stories.

Please reconsider the number of years.

Well, they did not find cocaine or nicotine in Egyptian mummies. They found trace amounts of the drugs during drug scans of the mummies.

The only mummies to test positive for cocaine were from the Munich museum, even though the mummies there were from different ages and origins. This makes it far more plausible that the cocaine contamination happened recently in the lab.

Most of the tobacco results were very low and are typical of environmental exposure.

The Egyptians documented all aspects of their lives very well, including drug use. They left no depictions of cocaine or tobacco use.


http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/117_toke.shtml

French scientists examining the stomach of the Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II found fragments of tobacco leaves. Further analysis of the 3,200-year-old mummy indicated the presence of nicotine in the body. Conventional wisdom has it that tobacco was unknown in the Old World until the Spanish brought it back from the Americas in the Sixteenth Century.

(Anonymous; "Tobacco in Egypt," Anthropological Journal of Canada, 16:10, 1978.)



From Science Frontiers #7, June 1979. © 1979-2000 William R. Corliss

http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf007/sf007p02.htm

[QUOTE=Elphaba
It happened. We are free to ascribe any meaning we wish to, but the great flood did happen.[/QUOTE]

As long as you have the right pants on.

http://www.beckersurf.com/Images/Products/53701.jpg

It is hardly surprising that flood myths are so common when manki...oops! how terribly un-PC of me!..better make that entitykind, tended to settle where there was plenty of water for his/her moonshine stills. For instance, around river mouths where it is prone to flash flooding and tsunami's. (Bible example: that notorious town drunk, Noah, set up his copper as soon as he got ashore and managed to get that maggotted that his son Ham apparently porked him) :eek:

As a matter of fact, there are cannibalstic Christians in Borneo, who still believe to this day, that the our Jewish "God" sends floods to punish them. :bowdown:

This was on fark and seemed relevant. I'm not advancing it as an impartial source or even on that I particularly like, but it does raise some interesting questions about the Judeo-Christian flood story.

http://www.skepticreport.com/creationism/sillyflood.htm

I definitely don't like the smarmy tone of the writing, but some of the arguments are well-grounded.

I like this quote from the article.

If they prove the bible myth wrong they should do the same for all the other myths around the world.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html
I am sure they could easily say the same things about Homer and his Iliad, "it's just fantasy" , the people of the time did say this, lucky with that
Henrich Schliemann, he started digging.
Thinking "in the box" never solved any problems. This quote is from a commercial , but it is good :)

I'm not sure you directed that to my post mentioning 3.5 billion years but I'll elaborate anyway. My point was not that particular billions of years old global flood, but that an ancient humanoid might have had enough intelligence to see clues of previous ancient floods and those ideas led them to imagining how it happened, fear of the consequences if it happened again, and myths arising from those ideas. Plus, besides that "global" flood that may have occured billions of years ago, there were surely many other more recent impact related tsunamis that left dramatic evidence of floods. The NG article mentioned and showed some evidence of the formations on land left behind, and also evidence of the impact sites that created those features.

Here's a question for you - why do you think that a wooden ship exposed to the elements for thousands of years has survived in any recognizable form? It's not like it would be buried in a tomb the desert. It would be exposed to rain, snow and wind, and we all know that wood rots. There are also lots of plants that like to grow on exposed wood, even in high-altitude conditions. I can't think of any 1000 year old wooden buildings that are still standing that haven't been undergoing constant upkeep, let alone many that have.

Given that the only real proof of the "flood myth" would be The Ark, aren't we several thousands of years too late to find it? At best, I expect that IF it did exist, it rotted and blew away in the wind a long time ago.

Doesn't the sheer complexity of plant and animal life basically disprove most of the flood myths in and of itself? For instance, orchids need a very specific environment to grown in and the flood that you're describing would kill them all. The same with all the varieties of elephants, snakes, and coral. A major rise in sea level would kill huge numbers of these species, and there's nothing in the fossil record to suggest anything of the sort, especially since modern humans have only been around for 100,000 years or so, and civilized enough to build a vessel of the required size for about 40,000 years.

At the same time, lots of cultures have myths about the sun either being or being directly controlled by a living entity. Why don't we try to "think outside the box" on that one too?

OK. I beg you to reconsider the number of years...

.....:thumbsup: We haven't been around for long enough is all I meant to say.
Y'know, writing stories and what-not. Imagining things, even.

here's something that i learned again while being santa claus. notions of god and functions attributed much later to the superego tend to converge. it is as if there can be no authority without the possibility of retribution. myths like the flood in part lean on this logic and so are formally necessary. there is no reason why it follows that because lots of social groups posit something like the flood that there must have been a flood----there is no need to suppose that these myths are based on some kind of "genetic memory" of one.

or you could look at the flood myths as generalizations of anxieties about death.

or you could look at flood myths as devices fashioned by any number of groups to explain their relationship to a past that extends well beyond themselves, to explain disruption or radical change, to explain the passage of time and of civilizations (whatever). so you could look at flood myths as an aspect of the more general process of backwriting existing social relations---a function that sociologists since durkheim have argued is central to religion (or belief in a transcendent order more generally).

or maybe these myths have to do with the ice age and the extinction of the neanderthals and so do constitute a kind of continuity with a very distant past. but the generality of these myths--that they show up in so many variants--seems to indicate that it follows from structural features that are shared by a wide range of belief systems rather than from a genetic memory.

it doesn't seem to me that there is any way to know.
so it's an aesthetic question.

There is no real need to believe that the first five books of the Bible are anything but etiologies.

Like any good myth, they have some universal truths and lessons that can be shared. But like Greek, Roman, Chinese, Norse, etc., myths, there is no need to believe they are factual stories.

It's fine if you want to believe in the power of God and the resurrection of Christ, but really... what benefit is there to believing the there was an actual flood, Tower of Babel or Garden of Eden?

I just don't get the need to believe in something that is clearly an important story but just doesn't jive with *anything* we know of the complexity of nature.

You have a very low standard of "proof."

A lot of cultures have flood myths and, therefore, there must have been a global flood? How is that proof? Imagine the turn of events that let to what we're seeing, here. How did all these cultures come to learn about the flood? Apparently, it was never recorded since they all have different stories with only the flood in comomn. Verbal tradition run through the Broken Telephone phenomena? Maybe but I don't think that rises to the level of "proof." Why don't, literally, all cultures have a flood myth? Finally, if there was a global flood, where did the water come from? Where did it go?

Interesting... It sounds crazy but I will look into it...

Well, to be fair, of course they're going to work on the most popular myth in their culture...

Also, to be fair, "thinking inside the box" solves most of life's problems. It's only the occasional problem that can't be solved in this manner and, so, "thinking outside the box" is necessary...

Who is Henrich Schliemann and what's this about the Iliad?

I think he's the dude who believed that Troy was a real place and subsequently dug a bunch of cities up...

that's him.

As already stated, Schliemann discovered the lost city of Troy, previously thought to be a myth. All myths are usually based on some sort of fact. A myth that the sun is driven by a living entity, wouldnt exist if the sun didnt appear to move across the sky. The garden of eden may have existed between the tigris & euphrates, but the story is anologous to the rise of man, from a primitive instinctual animal, to a self aware, reasoning being. The flood myths are almost certainly based on an epic flood. Most people at that time never traveled more than 50 miles from the place they were born. Their world wasnt quite as large as ours, so a global flood to them may have been regional.

how do you know this?

Joseph Campbell told me :D
sorry, I know you were asking a serious question...I've been up all night grading papers :grumpy:

maybe that sentence should be amended to read: all myths are based on some kind of truth

btw, I know this gets some people twisted, but "myth" doesn't mean non-reality. Troy is still a myth...even after people realized it was real.
But even allowing that there is an underlying "truth" to the flood stories, it doesn't follow that there *had* to be an actual flood(s).

I have no issue with a flood per se. I have an issue with the hyperbole involved in the Ark story. The whole world and ALL the animals in a handful of big ships for 40 days and nights...

nah, just two of each

...and what was written down and passed along as facts was probably imaginary. What we "know" about where we came from probably pales in comparison to the truth. "TRUTH" being something everyone must recognize.
Having brains has not gone everywhere yet. Has it?

Sorry, I suppose my point wasnt clear, The myth that Thor strikes his hammer and creates thunder & lightening exists because thunder & lightening are a fact, but science had yet to explain their nature. Myths are usually a way to describe the world or events in the world which are inexplicable.

I think Roachboy is asking how you "know," for example, that myths surrounding Thor and his mighty hammer stemmed from ancient people trying to explain thunder and lightening?

Your explanation sound plausible, but how do you know?

Through observations, deductive reasoning capabilities, all things considered the simplest explanation tends to be correct.

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I think the simplest expanation for the flood myths is that an epic flood actually occured. When the last ice age ended it raised sea levels 400 ft, as I already stated. That would explain flood myths all around the world. Seems simple enough to me.

...damned if I don't agree with you.

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That just about sums it up, Charlatan.

Although I despair for a world that needs to fabricate increasingly irrational flights of fantasy to defend what is fundamentally a hand-me-down folk tale.

Of course it could have happened that the Hebrew’s hereditary Iraqi :oogle: God did drown all his sinful snot gobblers, except for a prize crawler and his kids, in a fit of spiteful pique.

And furthermore, that he is gonna fry my agnostic arse forever for applying my God-given (or Satan-inspired, according to my reading of the Bible) logic to an ancient allegory, and not simply ILLogically grovelling before the unsubstantiated prose of some paper Pope, written exclusively by men with a vested interest in their subject.

However, I am just as sure as our global religious regulators that this is not so.

Omar Khyyam said it best for me,

If the mediteranean and black sea were dry, during the height of the last ice age and ice dams held back the atlantic. When rising sea levels broke these dams, the ensuing flood would certainly be epic. Thats not as simplistic, but plausible. It may have been a compination of rising sea levels, catastophic flooding, and localized flooding. The simplest explanation tends to be correct, but not always.

I have a sense of humor and there's no blind spot regarding my religious beliefs-- Your 'joke', as you want to call it, just wasn't funny. Though, I find it odd because I can't make a 'joke' about atheists and their lack of beliefs without being jumped on by three or four people ;)

(See thread floating around 'Tilted Living'.)

There's no need. As I stated earlier, people are typically blind to that which they actively participate in.

For argument's sake, let's just assume that Christianity did borrow the idea of a flood from other religions in the reason. How would you qualify the striking similarities between Christian belief, Mayan belief and many Native American beliefs regarding a great flood? Mere coincidence, right?

I don't believe I stated that I was offended anywhere in my posts.

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Not really. It's been stated before, so there's really no use in continuing to re-iterate said points over and over and over again.

The doco you saw was most probably Dr Robert Ballard’s exploration of the Black Sea floor on cable TV.

I also saw it, either on our History Channel or National Geographic channel.

Ballard had a series on cable ("Pay TV" we call it) about submarine exploration (The discovery of the Titanic being one of them) but I am rooted if I can recall its name. :shakehead:

I don't think it has been stated before, much less "over and over and over again" but I would love to be proven wrong on this point if only someone would actually say something meaningful! Seriously, in the amount of text that you have typed dancing around the issue, you could have simply said what bothered you...

Oh, but it has! I'm pretty sure you've seen me explain why I (Amongst other people) feel the way I do in threads past. After a while I simply get tired of explaining it over and over again, only to garner the same reactions and (Non-) results. It's not dancing around the issue, so much as I'm tired of writing the same thing over again only to have it be promptly ignored.

Anywho... That's getting off-topic. To go back to my question: "How would you qualify the striking similarities between Christian belief, Mayan belief and many Native American beliefs regarding a great flood? Mere coincidence, right?"

One simple and plausible explanation (imo) is that they all noticed local geological evidence of ancient flooding, couldn't quite understand or explain how it happened, and with thoughts and fears about what would happen if it occured again, their similar myths arose. Sort of similar to how different peoples in far apart places on earth made up other somewhat similar myths about the sun, moon, and stars and what effects they have on earthlings.

You are being needlessly obtuse. Either explain why you find something insulting so we can either rectify or explain OR suck it up and stop wingeing. Seriously. If you have an issue with something I've said, tell me what it is.

As it is, I agree with Politicophile, you are being sophomoric.

I have already said that I have no problem with the idea that there was a great flood of some sort but I am also interested that many creation etiologies start with a world of water (including the book of Genesis). I am not surprised that when "starting over" the story would go back to a world of water.

To recap:

1) probably was some sort of flood or rising waters or great period of rainfall.
2) Mythologies grew out of these cataclysms - the most typical being the Gods are angry and washed the place clean.

If you wish to believe that the Noah story was real and happened just because it was in Bible, that's your business.

I found this while doing a little research....interesting, but the theory of an asteroid impact induced great flood myth was apparantly ridiculed by mainstream scientists...oh well, thats to be expected! The whole article called 'Cosmic Dancers on History’s Stage? The Permanent Revolution in the Earth Sciences' is a long read, heres part of the Taurid Demons section...

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:...lnk&cd=4&gl=us

Even within the short history of Homo sapiens, the most violent events onEarth have been extraterrestrial impacts.’John Lewis111Like the supporters of Gaia, the advocates of the Shiva hypothesis are asmall but seminal scientific minority. In light of the overwhelming evi-dence that impact cratering has remained a significant geological processthroughout the Phanerozoic aeon, they have built a respectable case forits episodic role in detouring evolution down new and unpredictablepathways. And, together with other neo-catastrophists, they have addedimpressive scaffolding to the Gould-Eldredge theory of punctuatedequilibrium and chaotic Earth history. The Impact Hypothesis, in otherwords, now has a firm purchase within geological time (107to 109years),and an important beachhead, established by the k/t debate, within evo-lutionary time (106to 108years). But what about ecological time (104to106years) and cultural time (102to 104years)? Have impact events lefttheir catastrophic imprints within human history? Few questions inEarth science are more controversial.In 1993, for example, two Austrian scientists published a book in whichthey claimed to solve the mystery of ‘the darkest chapter in human his-tory’: the deluge catastrophe chronicled in the Gilgamesh Epic, the OldTestament, the Vedas and scores of oral traditions all over the world.Edith Kristan-Tollmann and Alexander Tollman marshalled anthropo-logical and geological evidence to support their thesis that seven largecometary fragments had struck the ocean nearly ten millennia ago, caus-ing terrible tsunamis now recalled as the Flood. On the one hand, theycited numerous ancient accounts of ‘seven invading stars’, ranging fromthe ‘great burning mountains’ of the Jewish prophet Henoch to the ‘fierysons of Muspels’ in Icelandic saga, which they interpreted as contempo-raneous with flood legends. On the other hand, they presented ‘geologi-cal proof’ in the form of tektites (glassy impact ejecta) ‘with an age ofnearly ten thousand years’ from Australia and Vietnam, as well as thesmall Kofels impact crater in the Austrian Tyrol—caused, they said, by a‘splinter’ of the Noachian comet.112110Sara Genuth, ‘Newton and the Ongoing Teleological Role of Comets’, in Thrower,Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, pp. 302–3. Halley’s assertion—with which Newtonapparently concurred—that the earth was ‘the wreck of a former world’ caused consterna-tion in Church of England circles and led to his loss of the Savilian chair in astronomy atOxford. See Kubrin, in ibid., pp. 64–6.111Lewis, Rain of Iron and Ice, p. 157. 112Edith Kristan–Tollmann and Alexander Tollmann, ‘The Youngest Big Impact onEarth Deduced from Geological and Historical Evidence’, Terra Nova, no. 6, 1994, pp.209–17.
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77Although the Tollmans created a predictable stir in the popular media,they were punctually massacred in the scientific press. In one review, ateam of eminent meteoriticists, including R.A.F. Grieve, dismissed their‘evidence’ as ‘sheer fantasy’ and characterized their approach as ‘pseudo-science in the tradition of Donnelly and Velikovsky’. The critics system-atically demolished their tektite dating as well as their exaggeratedclaims for the Kofels structure.113Of course, this is hardly the first case where the self-proclaimed confir-mation for biblical or mythical events has turned into a fiasco. The wholeintellectual terrain of archaeological and historical catastrophism hasbeen polluted by far too many bizarre hypotheses and spurious discover-ies. Rare or unique astronomical phenomena have become the staple dietof a burgeoning genre of fringe-science, mega-disaster books.114Yet, atthe risk of ridicule, cometary astronomers—led by Victor Clube atOxford and William Napier at Edinburgh—have persevered in arguinga scientific case for cosmic intervention in human history. They claim, infact, that some ancient societies almost surely experienced the shatteringequivalent of nuclear warfare. In an important restatement of the theory that they have been develop-ing over the last twenty years, Clube and Napier—together with DavidAsher and Duncan Steel from the Anglo-Australian Observatory—con-trast two different interpretations of impact tectonics. ‘Stochastic cata-strophism’, as they call it, is concerned with the extra-terrestrialinfluence upon the geological longue durée. It relies on averaged crateringrates, derived from known terrestrial structures and from the impactrecords of the Moon and inner planets. The history of small, but morefrequent impactors (less than one kilometre in diameter) is discriminatedagainst in this approach because they do not individually produce globalconsequences, and because terrestrial erosion more quickly erases theirfootprints.115Moreover, the data set is too coarse-grained to resolve tem-poral heterogeneities—clustered events, for instance—within frequen-cies of less than one million years. As a result, it cannot differentiatewhat Clube and Napier call the ‘microstructure of terrestrial cata-strophism’ within the time periods relevant to human evolution.116‘Coherent catastrophism’, on the other hand, contends that ‘the overalleffect of giant comets on terrestrial evolution is far more complex thanthat of single giant impacts.’ Impact events operate on all time-scales,and punctuational crises are ‘hierarchically nested in the overall mannerof glacial-interglacials’. To visualize this entire spectrum of phenomena,especially the influence of small-body impacts, Clube and Napier haveaugmented cratering data and near-Earth-object censuses with a wealth113Alexander Deutsch et al., ‘The Impact-Flood Connection: Does It Exist?’, Terra Nova,no. 6, pp. 644–50. Ignatius Donnelly was the apocalyptic American populist, whoseRagnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel, was a sensation of the 1880s; while Immanuel Veli-kovsky, of course, is the notorious author of Worlds in Collision, 1950.114For a recent example, see D. Allan and J. Declair, When the Earth Nearly Died: Compel-ling Evidence of a Catastrophic World Change—9,5000 BC, Bath 1995.115For a discussion of the dependence of the ‘decay constant’ on crater size, see S. Yabu-shita, ‘Are Periodicities in Crater Formations and Mass Extinctions Related?’, Earth, Moonand Planets, no. 64, 1994, pp. 209–10.116D. Asher, S. Clube, W. Napier and D. Steel, ‘Coherent Catastrophism’, Vistas inAstronomy, no. 38, 1994, pp. 5, 20–1.
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78of historical data, including medieval European records and Chineseastronomical archives.117While other researchers, moreover, have been absorbed in the search for cat-astrophic celebrities, like billion-megaton exterminator bolides, they havebeen focused on the study of the more prosaic population of communitionproducts—small Apollo asteroids, meteoroidal swarms, zodiacal dust—resulting from the break-up of giant comets. Although the comets onlyarrive in Earth-crossing orbits at 100,000–year-or-so intervals, their debris‘interact catastrophically with the Earth on relatively short time-scales:102–105years’. Clube, in fact, has argued that because of the frequency ofsmall-body impacts, terrestrial catastrophism may be ‘uniformitarian’ at alltime-scales greater than a millennium. Thus, a ‘new world view, embracingthe effects of the full range of “small bodies” in the Solar System...hasbecome one of the outstanding imperatives of our time’.

From above:
Lemme guess....the Mayans (...Tarheel for "man"?) and Injuns defiantly depicted the God from their Great Flood stories anthropomorphically - despite our global Jewish God’s "dire consequence" directive to them to portray him as a racially supremacist, pig and pussy-hating Mesopotamian psychopath, that His Hebrew pink-eyes kept imprisoned in a wooden crate?? (Still, I suppose that's a bit better than the book the poor bastard is locked up in today! :sad: )

That would also explain the strikingly Semitic profile of the Mayan and Injun Gods... :lol:

*Sigh*

Could you at least attempt to respond to my posts without resorting to extreme sarcasm? It's said that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, after all.

A great flood in the Mediterranean region doesn't explain why both Mayan and many Native American beliefs mirror that of Christianity. It's plausible to believe that all beliefs regarding the flood stem from a single occurrence; It's implausible to believe that each belief regarding the flood came to mirror each other in lieu of a lack of communication between the religions (Even greater so when you see flood myths in areas which aren't predisposed to flooding).

why do you want to believe that these "mythologies"--which i assume are understood here as the colonial worldview would have them understood, as kind of childish warm-up exercises for the Real Business of european-style religion, which is what Adults do---are all talking about the same thing via these flood narratives?

i think the op is addressing an aesthetic question: there is self-evidently no way to know whether there is or is not a common reference point. so it is a matter of preference, what seems pleasing to you, what feels right.

It depends on what you mean by "mirror" the great flood of Christianity. I don't know what all these other flood myths are so I can't say anything about them. The only similarity you've mentioned is that they share a flood. While this is an unmistakable similarity, it's also a superficial one...

All these flood myths can be explained by a singular flood, multiple floods, human imagination, or some combination thereof. Disregarding all other factors, I'd be inclined to agree with you and it was probably a single flood.

However, there are many other factors to consider. Why aren't all the flood myths the same? Why don't literally all cultures have flood myths? Do all cultures assert them as more than myths? How would such a flood happen? Where did all the water come from and where did it all go? If a great flood wiped out all the Mayans, for example, why were there still Mayans?

In light of many other factors besides the existence of flood myths, the other explanations that would, otherwise, seem less likely, seem much more plausible. Context is everything...

Damn its hard to read that blue text! Is it me or what???

And...

Was “The Flood” truly universal or confined to planet Earth? Did God just “spit the dummy” with his terrestrial kids, or did he drown ALL extra-terrestrials sinners too? (Surely He wouldn't leave himself open to being accused of being Jewish and planet prejudiced. :hmm: )

If it’s the latter, what did he use to sadistically asphyxiate his wicked kids on parched planets. I mean, why would a “God” need water, or any other physical medium for that matter, to rid himself of his delinquent kids?

If His clearly psychotic personality compelled Him to drown mankind like so many unwanted kittens in a sack, why, like his comparatively compassionate creation, Adolf Hitler, couldn’t He have snuffed them painlessly with a global whiff of Zyklon B, if he needed a mortal medium?

It seems to me that Hitler was far more humane than the Jewish God whose people this kindly killer compassionately Holocausted!

Indeed, I have a daughter who is a drug addicted prostitute. According to God’s commandments and His own biblical example, I should have her stoned to death or drowned! In spite of this, I can’t even bring myself to hate her enough to self-righteously “rebuke” her for her “evil” lifestyle.

Does this mean I am more tolerant, merciful and loving, and consequently, if Christian’s claims for loving Him are to be believed, more worshipful than God?

Jesus Henderson…it does have a certain ring to it, doesn’t it? :bowdown: :bowdown:

This will be hard.

"Universal flood"?
We are ugly bags of mostly water.
(No such tools at his disposal, since we created them in labs)
Hitler was one of those charismatic idiots you often hear about.
Sorry about your daughter-truly.
No.
So does: "the language
so strangely arranged
that it sings."

Take care and be well sirs,
& please stop worrying about things you can't control.

Close enough

:love: :love: :love: it seems to work, & thankyou.

This one contains a possible explanation :

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

Tsunami brought on by asteroids?

A Rusty Brown Spectacled Ibis God, eh? I suppose that's just as plausible as a misogynistic, genocidal Jewish ogre in the sky. Or my own German Shepherd-headed Anubis, who speaks in a thick Aussie accent and couldn't give a rancid rats arse what his human pups do! :bowdown:

I'd encourage you to read this then. It's only a rough outline, but it'll give you something to research if you so desire.

The fact that individual flood myths differ from each other is, in itself, perfectly normal. Wasn't it you who referenced the telephone game? As time passes each culture is invariably going to have a different interpretation of the flood.

I don't know. All cultures don't need to reference a great flood for it to be true. A better question would be "Why do most cultures have one?"

I don't know of any religion which doesn't claim to be the absolute truth, so I guess the answer to your question would have to be 'yes'.

...Because God caused it to happen (As most religions say). I don't quite understand the purpose of your question...

I've always been taught that the ocean levels before the great flood were lower than what they are now (Which would explain where the water went).

Because it didn't wipe them all out.

Well, then, would you kindly name them? All I've seen in this thread are people saying "There must be more explanations!" but, as yet, I've only seen one (Maybe two) other explanations put forth.

Drowning is said to be relatively painless, but we highly fear it. As a species, we were around, thinking, before the end of the last ice age. Not advocating belief in past lives, a lot of "us" might have drowned, once upon a time.
Myths, with apologies to the scientists, are part of what we use to try to explain what we cannot understand. Sciences are their better half.
I don't believe that the land, since it formed, has ever been all covered at once, although large parts of it have gone under for long periods of time and will probably do so again, before and after us arguing.
Noah's ark, et al are exaggerations at best, lies at worst, and a struggling to believe in between. More power to us!

I drowned once. Trust me, it's anything but "painless."

In regard to flood mythology, the only common factor with flood myths from various cultures is the actual inclusion of some sort of flood. When you get right down to the details, it becomes evident that the various flood myths from around the world have little in common beyond that. Cultures from around the world have different dates, different origins, and vastly different accounts.

One doesn't even have to venture into the complete lack of sound empirical evidence and various physical impossibilities associated with a worldwide flood to recognize the fact that flood mythology amounts to little more than the a cultural construct centered around retellings of bronze age tall tales. Myths about floods are common because....

Get ready....

Floods are common.

They have been throughout history, and they will continue to be for as long as this planet has a water cycle. There are other myths from various cultures that revolve around other themes that are far more common than floods, but you don't see many people trying to advocate a literal interpretation of these myths.

Those who attribute(d) the deluge to spiteful deities tell us more about their paranoid authoritarian personality than their gargoyle of a god(s)

In my considered opinion, that’s why a comparatively compassionate Jesus was introduced into the Mein Kampfish Old Testament, to capture the more perceptive Librul punter.

The more removed we become from our brutish past, the more urbane our gods become. (Check out Scientology.) With the exception of the authoritarian Abrahamic religions, of course, who still use fear to keep the irrational faithful conforming to their clearly absurd creeds.