Seems like there is substantial interest in discussing the existence and/or extent of Noah’s flood.
154 thoughts on “Noah”
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The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Eternal Life!
I’m in!
ok, good! Now you have to give up anything fun.
No drinking, smoking, dancing, laughing, ____ing, ____ing, stealing, fornication, masterbation, incubation, vegetation, cogitation … and the list goes on
And just say no to drugs.
Are you still in?
It’s the not persecuting Christians aspect that I just can’t handle.
Glen Davidson
Maybe I could be just a mediocre Bible scholar and only give up dancing..
Also, did you just tell us that Fifth doesn’t masterbate? How the hell do you know that?
Well, in some congregations dancing is encouraged. So my advice would be to find a congregation where something you enjoy doing and don’t want to give up is encouraged.
Wouldn’t finding a congregation that properly represent the views of God be more useful?
You told him the truth, right? It was their fault.
Great opportunity to teach about the potential consequences of the choices we make. Hope you didn’t just punt and blame it on God.
Yeah, you might want to read that book:
“But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said to Moses.”
For a while we went to Quaker meetings. But they were only good when nobody talked. Solitary meditation is just as good in my book. George Fox was amusingly nuts, though.
So your theory is that it was only Pharaoh that drowned?
Or is it your theory that everyone who went after the Israelites in order to return them into slavery had their hearts hardened by God?
Or are you just trying to make bricks out of straw.
No, I think it’s made-up crap.
But if it where true it was set in motion by many events that were necessary. There could have simply been a path where the slaves were freed.In the story God is both punishing and controlling the actors.
I hope you don’t have children in your family, don’t teach children, and don’t interact with children in any way.
Kantian Naturalist,
Not a trivial, off-the-cuff remark then; merely a sweeping generalisation. I’m an atheist of the not-believing-in-God(s) kind. What other kind is there?
My reaction to a particular religious text is somewhat conditioned by that of my interlocutor. If someone is making an argument based on the Flood as an historic fact whose evidence is visible today, that is a statement I can get my assertoric teeth into. If someone wants to be a bit more mystical and revelatory about it, that’s fine.
One wonders why the story of Noah should be regarded as requiring a different approach to the vocabulary than – say – that of (a) Beowulf (b) a Maori creation myth.
Of course, you were still ‘officially’ a Christian then, Elizabeth, and yet didn’t see anything edifying in the story, other than to ‘share his horror’, that you could have responded to your four year-old, right? You had already given up on the notion of even possibly sinning against one’s Creator by then (rather important in the Noah story!), just like you’ve now retro-defined sacrament to suit your confused quasi-Buddhist, apostate lifestyle. Let’s everyone pat Lizzie on the back for being a bad (or better just say ‘non-‘) Christian empathetic mother!
Classy stuff at TAS, as usual! 😉
It wasn’t Elizabeth who said that. You made it look as if you were quoting her.
Greg’s unhealthy ‘fascination’ with Lizzie continues…
I’ll reiterate that I was the one who said that, not Elizabeth — and I don’t know if she agrees with me or not — I think that the absolute minimum standard of morality is to reject the possible goodness of any being (god or not) who would choose to drown every human being on an entire planet (or even in the limited “land” that fools like Fifth think were flooded by his god).
People who teach children that everyone did deserve execution by flood merely because they had “sinned against their creator” are disgusting child abusers. You’re odious if you tell children that they must worship a god who is a genocidal maniac who might kill them for any reason or for no reason at all.
A decent sane parent doesn’t drown his children because they’ve done something to offend him. But somehow we’re supposed to admire the heavenly Father who chose to drown every one* of its children, and every innocent animal, too. We’re supposed to stand by silently while human parents teach their lovely human children that they deserve to die at any moment at the whim of the oh-so-wonderful heavenly father for their alleged sins.
No, I won’t stand by silently.
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*Well, every one except Noah, the three sons, and the four un-named wives. And the bible conveniently omits the horror felt by the the sons’ three wives when their already-born children (and their own siblings and parents) were swept away from them into the flood, because only the eight could fit into god’s chosen story.
Children who have not been brainwashed yet instinctively recognize that this is a horror story. We should never let adults have the chance to brainwash the children into thinking that is some kind of good lesson for anybody.
I think it’s an excellent lesson. Just not the lesson Sunday school teachers intend. To me it illustrates the utter moral depravity of those who think the god of Noah is something to worship.
Oh, yes.
Exactly. And that’s an example of what makes biblical literalism so utterly absurd.
My “not trivial, off-the cuff remark” was with regard to my criticism of naturalism. I can develop in some other thread if there’s any interest; I don’t want to hijack this thread with that conversation.
With regard to atheism, I think it matters a great deal how one understands the term “belief”. There are at least two distinct senses of “belief” that need to be disentangled: an epistemic sense and a non-epistemic sense.
(Contrast “I believe that there’s beer in the fridge!” with “I believe in you!”)
In the epistemic sense, “belief” means one’s explicit or implicit endorsement of a claim or assertion. It is, to use the Sellarsian idiom I favor, a move in the game of giving and asking for reasons. It is the sort of thing for which evidence can be appropriate; there’s a corresponding epistemic duty on the person holding the belief to provide evidence for it if asked to do so. Beliefs in the epistemic sense can be true or false (or indeterminate).
In the non-epistemic sense, “belief” means one’s explicit or implicit expression of a commitment, esp. a commitment to perform an action or a closely related family of actions. “I believe in you” means that I am committed to supporting you, placing my trust in your abilities, and more generally expressing an attitude towards you. It is not the sort of thing one needs evidence for, because it is not a claim but rather more like a promise. Beliefs in the non-epistemic sense cannot be true or false.
The expression, “I believe in God” causes trouble because it functions in both the epistemic and non-epistemic senses. Our discussions here all turn on taking it (and other religious beliefs) in the epistemic sense. And sometimes they are intended in the epistemic sense — as moves in the space of giving and asking for reasons. To that extent, they are open to criticism.
I caused unnecessary confusion (not least of which in myself) in another thread when I stated that non-believers have no business criticizing religious beliefs as such. When I said that, I misspoke.
What I should have said is that whether or not religious beliefs are open to criticism depends on whether the religious beliefs are epistemic beliefs or non-epistemic beliefs. In the former sense, they are open to criticism; in the latter sense, they are not. This makes religious beliefs importantly different from philosophical or scientific beliefs, which only have an epistemic sense. There is no non-epistemic sense to “I believe that Alpha Centauri is the closest star to our solar system” or “I believe that libertarian free will is conceptually incoherent”, whereas there is a non-epistemic sense to “I believe Jesus died for our sins” or “I believe that the Messiah will come.”
Generally speaking, I think, religious conservatives (and especially Biblical literalists) hold their religious beliefs in the epistemic sense and religious liberals hold their religious beliefs in the non-epistemic sense. This is connected with the fact that religious conservatives want their beliefs to be binding on those who don’t already share them, and religious liberals do not. As a religious liberal, there is a sense in which “God is the ground of Being” is deeply meaningful to me, but not a sense that would make it count as a move in the game of giving and asking for reasons. It should be construed as an expression of my subjectivity rather than as a claim presented for the rational assessment of others.
I am not an atheist because I have religious beliefs; I am not a theist because they are not epistemic beliefs. But to avoid confusion, I prefer to use the word “belief” in the epistemic sense only, and not use the word “belief” in talking about my own religious attitudes and sensibilities.
In fact, the Bible does not teach that humanity deserved to be killed, because immediately afterward God expresses regret for His action. More precisely, He regrets having destroyed all of Creation because He was disappointed in humanity. But He never again tries to destroy all of humanity, either.
The God of the Bible has a steep learning curve that’s hard to reconcile with the maximal perfection attributed to the God of the philosophers.
I’m not convinced this means what you think it means. In any case, I think these statements are subject to criticism on the grounds that they are factually untrue or unrealistic.
Not by flood, anyway.
But I am still left with a bad taste. when I have asked at UD about Jericho, I have been assured that the people of Jericho were evil and deserved to be exterminated, right down to the last fetus and pet bunny. Not all of humanity, but presumably more than a handful, murdered not by flood, but by proxy.
I remain less disturbed less by the question of whether these stories are true than by the question of what kind of people would find the stories inspirational.
Just for a frame of reference: About once a week someone at UD posts something at UD comparing Darwin to Hitler or blaming Hitler on Darwin.
I am not interested in these allegations, because I know that people have gotten more sensitive to racism and classism in the last 150 years, and I know that to the extent Darwin might made insensitive utterances, I am unsympathetic to such sentiments and glad that we are trying to become better people.
But everywhere in the world I see people acting on bronze age morality and justifying it by scripture. Not all religious people, and not even the majority, but I am disturbed by the sounds of silence emanating from the mouths of the majority.
If those beliefs are taken in an epistemic sense, yes; if they are taken in a non-epistemic sense, then no. The general point I’m making is that taking religious beliefs in an epistemic sense is optional.
The Bible is much more of a Rorschach test than literalists and fundamentalists can find it within themselves to admit. I wouldn’t look to anyone at Uncommon Descent for an interpretation of Scripture consistent with moral decency. That doesn’t mean that there are no such interpretations.
In point of fact, it’s pretty likely that the genocide of the Canaanites, and indeed most of the “historical” events in the Hebrew Bible, never actually happened. It’s better understood as a piece of anti-Canaanite political propaganda that the Israelite authors put in their text as part of their attempt to give ideological justification to the rule of the Israelite kings from David through Zedekiah (the last king of Judah). They weren’t even trying to write factual history in our sense, but instead justify the rule of the kings of Israel and Judah. (Indeed, the very idea of writing factual history seems to have originated with Thucydides, and not before.)
Richard Elliott Friedman’s Who Wrote the Bible? is outstanding on all of this, though his version of the Documentary Hypothesis is more radical than that of most mainstream Biblical scholars.
Technically, it’s Iron Age social conventions legitimized in part by re-interpretations of Bronze Age myths.
Me too. Thanks for post.
I do call myself an atheist because I concluded that it was misleading to say I wasn’t.
But it doesn’t really describe me – I still have a meaningful referent for the word “God” and I’m not sure it’s that different from the one that Aquinas talked about – the one about whom we can only say what s/he is not.
Elizabeth,
Amusingly, I’ve stopped calling myself an atheist because it is misleading to say that I am.
It’s the very debate between theism and atheism that I think is badly mistaken, because both theism and atheism interpret religious discourse as a kind of assertoric discourse, and so religious beliefs as belief in an epistemic sense.
I don’t feel a particularly compelling need to have an “-ism” affixed to any of my positions, but I suppose I consider myself a strong agnostic with regard to theological questions and a religious liberal with regard to the meaningfulness of religious discourse and practice. Depending on specific context, post-theism or transtheism might also work for me.
There are two major respects in which I’m still closely aligned with people who call themselves atheists.
Firstly, I’m a secularist (with some qualification) and a humanist (with some qualification), so when it comes to law and public policy, I’m in broad agreement with most atheists and with most people here.
Secondly, I categorically reject “vertical transcendence”: the idea that a genuine spiritual attitude involves transcending the natural and material world. Instead I practice a “horizontal transcendence” centered on beauty, love, and justice — a sort of “transcendence-within-immanence”, if you will.
Hey KN and Elizabeth,
You would be surprised to find out that were it not for the incarnation I would be right there with you.
Start with
“God is the ground of Being”
add
“the Logos became flesh”
shake it up and you get someone like me
😉
peace
I don’t have any objection to that. On the other hand, it doesn’t do anything for me. Or, to say it differently, starting with that and not starting with that seem pretty much indistinguishable.
But I do object to that. I see it as absurd, though it might well be a fundamental assumption of conservatism.
I start with the assumption that anyone ascribing attributes to the word god is making stuff up. If they persist they are annoying.
If someone want to enjoy mystical feelings, I say go for it. I’ve had ’em.
But when you suggest that scriptures are something other than fiction, that’s just silly.
I would expect no less.
That has been the typical reaction for 2 thousand years or so.
If you don’t mind me asking what do you find to be absurd about it. That the Logos could become flesh or that it would desire to do so?
peace
To be fair, it is not a fundamental assumption of religious conservativism but a fundamental assumption of Christianity. The question is how to understand it. (Not being a Christian, I have no understanding of it to share.)
My main objection is to the earlier “in the beginning was the logos”. This seems to presume that logic and concepts are human independent and fixed. However, I see them as human constructs that dynamically change over time.
Neil Rickert,
I think that’s a fair point, even if one were more generous to John and interpreted “logos” as something like “the intelligible structure of reality” or “the fact that reality is intelligible”.
Ladyman and Ross at one point characterize ‘naturalism’ as the view that reality does not conform to any a priori standards of reasonableness. I don’t like that use of ‘naturalism’ but I do like the basic idea: it is not a priori that the real is the rational.
Thanks for the response guys.
I think I understand where you are coming from. At least as much as I can given the differences in our worldviews.
The intelligibility of the universe is pretty much the core assumption on my part. My entire understanding of world is based on the fact that I can trust that my thoughts have some connection to reality if my brain is functioning correctly.
So your understanding is quite foreign to me.
I’m not even sure what it means to say that it is an absurd notion that the universe could be inherently intelligible. It really is like we inhabit different universes.
Any way It is good to know that there are guys as nice as yourselves who live in the other universe
😉
peace
I cannot find any basis for that assumption.
Presumably, Aristotle considered the world to be intelligible. But the world that he found intelligible did not include radioactivity, Newtonian physics, DNA, plate techtonics, and lots of other stuff.
I’ll readily grant that the part of the world that we find intelligible is such that we will find it intelligible. But that’s pretty much tautologous. It sure seems that we only see those aspects of the world that we find intelligible. The brain does a great job of making sense of that which it can make sense of, and presenting just that to us as the world.
The ancient Hebrews probably found the world intelligible, too. But the world that they found intelligible had a solid domed ceiling above the earth that was illuminated by a diffused blue light during the day which they saw as independent of the sun. I’m of course referring to the account in Genesis 1.
What happened to Noah on this thread. ?Thats random drift too!
Noah counting for drift.
KN,
That God sent a global flood to wipe out all but a handful of humans is a religious claim. How is it not assertoric?
You would get me too, were it not for the difference between “epistemic” and whatever the other thing was (assertoric?) belief.
I love the Gospel of St John. I even wrote a full length version for children once. I think it is a beautiful work of poetry and theology.
But I’m not at all convinced it’s epistemically true. In fact, it seems much more probable that it is not.
It remains a key piece of “scripture for my “religion”. As does, in the same sense, Ursula Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.
I would argue it did but he had not fully discovered it yet.
He was sort of like a kid reading Lord of the Rings and thinking it was a just a nice story about Hobbits.
We on the the other hand read can read the same story and understand it in more depth.
Aristotle’s knowelege of the universe for the most part was not wrong just incomplete.
Of course there are some things he was totally wrong about but I would chalk that up to a brain that was not functioning correctly for one reason or another. It was not the fault of the universe in my opinion.
One of the reasons the incarnation was important was to correct those mental defects.
peace
I’d be interested in understanding how you can accept science without accepting methodological naturalism for science.
But I can question the appropriateness of such an attitude. I could ask, “why do you believe in x?” You might choose to say, “I just do”. Then we could have a discussion of whether acting on unexamined beliefs is a good way to live one’s life, although I have a vague recollection that some philosopher said something already about the “unexamined life”.
Or you could say: “x is my brother, and I believe in unconditional support for one’s close family”. Then we could have a discussion about whether that attitude was appropriate.
So it seems to me that even with non-epistemic beliefs, there is a need to consider the space of reasons, although such consideration would be similar to (not the same as) discussion of moral beliefs, rather than discussion of scientific beliefs.
Okay. But it misses the point.
My point was that there may be a lot that we haven’t discovered yet. To say that the world is intelligible is to say that everything is potentially discoverable. But is it? Maybe what we have not yet discovered is not even discoverable.
The difference between us I guess is that I would say that the world is in principle potentially discoverable in it’s entirety.
That is to say the universe is completely and comprehensively discoverable at least by the Logos itself.
peace
It’s not really a religious claim. It’s nearer to a scientific claim. It’s actually falsifiable. And has been roundly falsified.
A religious claim related to it might be: “humanity suffers when we forget God, but God does not forget us”.
Or something. It has a certain (limited) value as a myth, but we can doubt its usefulness.