I think the flood story holds water(pun intended) for two reasons. First it occurs all over the world with suprisingly small variation(world flooded by gods because of man's evil a single family survive). Native Americans, Abrigonies, Babylonians, Greeks, Hebrews, and countless more all tell teh story.

Second we have found fossilized fish and sea creatures on mountain tops. Some of this is undoutably explained by continental drift yes but it also shows that at some point that much of whats now the earths surface is now under water. Its not just in South America either they find evidence through out the world in different mountain ranges periodicly.

eh? that is new for me. in fact i heard that most civilisations never mentioned anything about a flood? is there a chance for you to tell the story?

Actually many did have a story about the flood, in Hawaii there's a story about a family that gather animals and they were the only one's to survive. Many, many, many cultures have something of a flood mentioned.

it is new to me, indus civilisation, the islanders egyptians, persians, they dont mention those things

they always say many people have a flood but they fail to proof that claim

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html that link has all the flood stories you ever wanted to hear

If the whole earth was covered by six miles of water, then all nations must have been completely exterminated. Yet Babylon, Egyptian and Chinese history runs right through this period without a break

did you even look at the link ?

Actually it could hold. Provided that the cave was perfectly formed into either aperfect arch or a perfect sphere. Both of which are quite "rare" to say the least in nature. That would be the only way that a cave at the bottom of the ocean could hold out with millions / billions of gallons of water sitting on top of it.

However...
If the caves were air tight, then there would be no way for it to collapse unless the now pressurized air was somehow released. Think of a can of baked beans that is open. If you stand on the side of it, with all your weight, what happens? It collapses right? Now take that same can, unopened, and stand on it in the same manor. It will stand up to your weight now. This is because of the pressurized air. This I'm sure you already know.

But, the best part is yet to come. Now you might say that the can would collapse after enough weight is put on top of it, right? This only happens because the pressurized air inside, along with the contents, have somewhere to go.

Now encase the can of beans in solid cement. Apply the same pressure you did to get the can to collapse while it was full. It will take nearly 1,000 times the pressure now to collapse the can, and even before then, the concrete would have to collapse first. This would apply to an under ocean cave as well, provided it was totally encased and air tight.

This is the best explaination I can give right now (I'm at work). I think this might be what they are arguing about Stellar. Check with them though.

Actually it could work just fine as long as you consider the idea that the flood occured before recorded history. As for specific stories there are litterally thousands. To pick two consider the Epic of Gilgamesh(probably the oldest written story in any language) from Babylonia which includes an incredibly similar flood story. Also in Greek lore its said that after the opening of Pandora's box man became so wicked that the gods flooded the earth allowing a few to survive on a boat who eventually restarted civilization.

i checked the link and found enough proof for a flood never to happen







before 6000 ad? it does not seem to fit in with the date of the bible

i completely forgot what we were arguing..

a world wide flood or the one from the bible or noah's story

i dont think there was a flood

Some people hate to Read so they have others do it for them or wait for the MOVIE to come out!

Actually no the story can work fine and still fit with in the bible. The problem is in interpritation not in dating.

i read about something from a website it said that the flood happened in one piece of land and people mistranslated it

http://www.churchoftrueisrael.com/comparet/comp19.html



could be true

Which raises the simple question then why are there legends of it scattered across the planet instead of one small area like you'd expect. That could explain why the Hebrews and Babylonians had flood stories but doesn't say much about why hawaiins and native americans do(its interesting that one tribe(I believe its Navajo but not positive) teaches that the world was once destroyed by water and one day will be destroyed by fire a sentement the bible echoes).

if only we know when it happened

do we?

some of these civilisations lived too long after eachother to know about it

Yet they all still talk about it. Interesting isn't it?

Yes but, as the website says, there are none, and there wouldnt be enough to hold 6 miles of water, because that wouldnt be structurally sound.



Many religions are based off of a predecessor. Not so interesting now, is it?

Yes thats true but how are cultures that are not connected geographicly or culturaly sharing a common religion?

At one point the species was connected geographically, it then branched off into different parts of the world.

Either way, be more specific on which cultures you're talking about plz.

so the bible would be the last one too record the flood, and before that there were some people who also had a similar story. some of these stories are completely different. most do not speak of a world wide flood but just a landmass that drowned. also it is just folklore.same stories like how the thunder god of japan stopped the mongolian force

but is a flood scientifically realistic?

I’m just thinking if God is able to put that much water here by making it rain...and is able to create Earth with no effort, he can pretty much do anything...like making large amounts of water disappear. We always try to limit him by science or things that we can't make sense of. I'm not saying he doesn't use science...I'm just saying that he can pretty much do whatever he wants and not leave evidence for his people to understand it.

Then he can even lie and be evil to us, can he not?

Not only that, but I've heard countless times "Science doesnt make sense" and "How can something come out of nothing" and "Thats impossible!" comming from religious people. I dont want to hear someone say "Science says something came out of nothing, and thats impossible" just to turn around and justify the same thing happening in their own religion by saying "God can do everything."

"God can do everything." is a copp out and is used by people as a scapegoat from actually answering the question, IMO.

if science does not make sense why do religious people try to proof something happened using science?

Perhaps to prove to themselves that their belief is the truth.

hypocritical right?

Do I dare answer that?.......Yea I do! Yes hypocritical.

There is a plant in the desert in California that is said to be 7000 years old.

The plant is so delicate that too much water would kill it.

Everything I have seen points towards the "greatflood" happening 5000 years ago.

If it happened withing the last 7000 years it would be:

a ) impossible the plant is 7000 years old or it would have died under floodwaters

b ) impossible that the flood covered the entire Earth

c ) impossible that there was a flood at all

I am thinking the plant is not 7000 years old, but saying that ....the plant specialists must be able to guess the age within 2000 years hey?

So the flood would have to have been older than 5000 years ago.

I am wondering how a flood that happened more than 3000 years BC was recorded in a book written 4000 years later give or take.

Personally I think it is a great fable.

Nox

Depends on how old the bible is for starters. If it was in fact written originally by Moses it's not that far off. Even if not there is still a simple matter of oral traditions and word of mouth. A number of stories that still circulate today started with oral traditions and got written down eventually.

I'm no scientist stellar but I can't agree with your statement. There are places around the world that seem to have met a watery demise at around the same time...7,000-10,000bc. There are just too many coincidences to say it wasn't a flood. Now dont get me wrong...I'm not trying to defend the bible. There's other evidence not even related that point to a flood. Here's one...divers were exploring a cave located in a famous spring in Florida...they found an ancient burial ground! 200ft. deep.Some of the last carbon date on the mummies were around 10,000 years ago...that is a whole continent away from Noah...or Gilgamesh whatever you call him. A little off topic but the mammoths seemed to have met there end at the same time around the whole siberian circle which I hear was more temperate back then. Who knows what caused it ...some speculate a pole shift put polar regions in more temperate zones where they melted rapidly.

Simply put...

There are historical accounts for several "deluges" or floods in seperate places throughout the world. Many of these are believed to be the sources of the myths which we have grown accustomed to, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Noah story, and even some which we have not such as the Eridu Genesis of the Sumerians.

One of the earlies instances stems from about 12,000 years ago which flooded the pathway which once connected New Guinea to Australia, and was perhaps the inspiration for a section of the aborginal Austrialian myth describing a flooding.

Far more likely though is that the common myths find an origin in the flooding of the Black Sea approximately 7,600 years ago. It is believed that the event occured quite suddenly, filling up the sea from the residue of the now melting glacial bodies. Eventually the mediterranian sea, now filled with the aformentioned meltwalter, spilled over a rocky sill and flooded a huge area around and significantly expanded the Black Sea.

There is evidence both to support and debunk this theory however, so if you really want to know more about, it then do your research and choose which side you believe. I can tell you now that whether or not great floods actually occured is NOT the question though; they certainly did.

If we are trying to parallel this Black Sea flood with the Noah tale however, I think we run into two problems; time periods, and the fact that the entire world wasn't flooded as this story proposes. If i'm not mistaken, the Abrahamic calendar leads to believe that the world in its present, created by God sense, has only been around for 6,000 or so years. (And I could be wrong here, tell me if I am but PROVE it) This would come up about 1,000 years too short for even the most recent great flood. As for the second potential problem, this is certainly unavoidable. One could propose that the people believed that maybe they were the only ones left after the floods occured, but this would do little to support the notion that scripture was divinely inspired since it would be absolutely wrong on this account.

That's my two cents at least.

Yes, but thats not a case of a world wide flood, nor is it the case of a flood that would exceed the tallest mountain, is it?

Say you're on an island... there are mountains around the center, and a ditch on the outside of the mountain. If it rains on a part inside the mountains, no, its not going to fill out the ditches. If it rains all over the area, then yes its going to fill out the ditches. If it rains only inside the mountains, but to a point over the mountains, the water is going to fall into the ditches and fill them up.

Are you talking about the Azteks? Cortez said that they had many similar ceremonies as well as some crosses that they used during worship. Some people believe this is because an Irish monk named St. Brenden visited North America before Columbus.

Quite Right. Recent discoveries point to St. Brenden being the first to carry "western" european religion to North and South America.