Is the Story of Noah the worst teaching in the Bible?

[Alchopwn]

The Christian Bible is a very flawed document, as anybody who has read it from cover to cover with any degree of critical faculty engaged will understand.  Now, for the purposes of this criticism I am using the term Christian Bible, and my preferred source is the King James Version, being the oldest version in English, along with its faux "ye olde" version of English which was never even used back in the day when it was first published (fun fact).  This also allows us to incorporate the teachings from the Old and New Testaments.

For me, the absolute worst part of the Bible is the Story of Noah (Genesis 6-10).  Now there are a good many other parts of the Bible that are just hideously pornographic and pointlessly violent, such as the story of the Levite and his Concubine (Judges 19), or the loathsome psychological abuse implicit in the Widow's Mite Parable (Luke 21:1-4), or the utter hypocrisy of The Temple Tantrum (John 2: 13-17), but for its sheer wrongness, idiocy, and perversion, nothing is worse than the Story of Noah.  If a person can read the Story of Noah, in the 21st Century and still be a religious monotheist who believes in the God of the Bible imo, their brain is not switched on.

So we are told that the story starts with there being great wickedness in the world.  Nothing specific, just a lot of wickedness.  If we read the Book of Enoch, we discover that this wickedness we discover it was actually the Mega gigantic 200+ foot tall children of Angels and Humans who are called Nephilim going on a rampage and eating all the people, animals and plants.  So what does God do?  He conceives a plan to raise the water level to drown the giants... and everything else.  This of course ignores the fact that the giants are really tall, and will be the last ones to drown, especially if they climb a mountain.  Nope, God has a perfect(ly stupid) plan.   Mass genocide and species extinction.  But wait, enter the Noah side of things...

So Noah is a believer, and God gets him to build a very large boat, the Ark.  We all know the story at this point.  Then he builds a ship that is 50 foot high, 510 foot long, and 74 feet wide.  It is an very big wooden ship, and may explain why the Middle East is now a desert, given how many trees it would have taken, but I jest.  For all the size of the vessel, we have some serious logistical issues. (a) It still isn't big enough to hold 2 of every insect.  (b) it isn't big enough to carry food for 2 of all the animals of Eurasia, let alone the rest of the continents (c) It certainly won't manage all the poop (d) what do the animals do then they get parked on the top of Mt Ararat and there's nothing to eat?  (e) what are all the meat eating animals going to eat?  (f) all the species will still go extinct, as 2 of every kind doesn't represent enough genetic diversity and they will rapidly inbreed to total sterility, and the same is true of Noah's family, regardless of what a racially diverse group they were.  This is just the tip of the Iceberg in terms of things about the Noah story that just don't work.  But wait, there's more...

40 days later, God calls off the apocalypse and allows Noah's god fearing and righteous family to depart the Ark with all the animals and begin to repopulate the Earth.  Then we get the whole story of Ham, finding Noah drunk and naked (and Noah's the most righteous man alive, mind you) and getting Shem and Japhet to have a look, whereupon Japhet proves to be the only one with any decency, and stops the nonsense, and Ham and Canaan are punished by becoming slaves.  This becomes the basis for all future racism, as Ham was black, Shem was Asiatic, and Japhet was white.  Add to this, the unedited earlier version where Ham actually castrated the sleeping  Noah.  Plus there is the non-canon version where Noah got rid of his old wife and took on a younger woman, which was probably a good thing as Noah was previously married to his cousin, and inbreeding was already a problem with the reduced population.

Oh, and we know from later works that the Nephilim weren't all destroyed by the Flood either as there was s second wave of Nephilim soon after the Flood... 10/10  perfect plan God.

You have to wonder how anyone can read this and still believe that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, and this crappy nonsense is the best He could come up with.  I mean, He could literally have just blown up the Nephilim and their offending angel and human parents with thunderbolts, but instead he needs to murder everything on Earth and still not kill all the Nephilim.

So there you have it, Mass extinction, genocide, castration, inbreeding, drunkenness, the religious-ideological foundations of racism, and ultimate proof that God is an incompetent nincompoop. Hooray for Noah.

Thoughts?  Questions?  What is your worst Bible story?

 

Edited June 17 by Alchopwn

[eight bits]

55 minutes ago, Alchopwn said:

What is your worst Bible story?

Mark 16:15-20: If you really believe in Jesus, then handle a poisonous snake.

As to Noah, it is a little known fact that the Nephilim also survived God's Plan B to wipe them out, by stealing a page from Noah's playbook.

 

 

[Essan]

1 hour ago, Alchopwn said:

So Noah is a believer, and God gets him to build a very large boat, the Ark. 
 

Correctly speaking, a very large wooden box.   Not a boat.  

Which further proves the point!

[+Hammerclaw]

2 hours ago, Alchopwn said:

The Christian Bible is a very flawed document, as anybody who has read it from cover to cover with any degree of critical faculty engaged will understand.  Now, for the purposes of this criticism I am using the term Christian Bible, and my preferred source is the King James Version, being the oldest version in English, along with its faux "ye olde" version of English which was never even used back in the day when it was first published (fun fact).  This also allows us to incorporate the teachings from the Old and New Testaments.

For me, the absolute worst part of the Bible is the Story of Noah (Genesis 6-10).  Now there are a good many other parts of the Bible that are just hideously pornographic and pointlessly violent, such as the story of the Levite and his Concubine (Judges 19), or the loathsome psychological abuse implicit in the Widow's Mite Parable (Luke 21:1-4), or the utter hypocrisy of The Temple Tantrum (John 2: 13-17), but for its sheer wrongness, idiocy, and perversion, nothing is worse than the Story of Noah.  If a person can read the Story of Noah, in the 21st Century and still be a religious monotheist who believes in the God of the Bible imo, their brain is not switched on.

So we are told that the story starts with there being great wickedness in the world.  Nothing specific, just a lot of wickedness.  If we read the Book of Enoch, we discover that this wickedness we discover it was actually the Mega gigantic 200+ foot tall children of Angels and Humans who are called Nephilim going on a rampage and eating all the people, animals and plants.  So what does God do?  He conceives a plan to raise the water level to drown the giants... and everything else.  This of course ignores the fact that the giants are really tall, and will be the last ones to drown, especially if they climb a mountain.  Nope, God has a perfect(ly stupid) plan.   Mass genocide and species extinction.  But wait, enter the Noah side of things...

So Noah is a believer, and God gets him to build a very large boat, the Ark.  We all know the story at this point.  Then he builds a ship that is 50 foot high, 510 foot long, and 74 feet wide.  It is an very big wooden ship, and may explain why the Middle East is now a desert, given how many trees it would have taken, but I jest.  For all the size of the vessel, we have some serious logistical issues. (a) It still isn't big enough to hold 2 of every insect.  (b) it isn't big enough to carry food for 2 of all the animals of Eurasia, let alone the rest of the continents (c) It certainly won't manage all the poop (d) what do the animals do then they get parked on the top of Mt Ararat and there's nothing to eat?  (e) what are all the meat eating animals going to eat?  (f) all the species will still go extinct, as 2 of every kind doesn't represent enough genetic diversity and they will rapidly inbreed to total sterility, and the same is true of Noah's family, regardless of what a racially diverse group they were.  This is just the tip of the Iceberg in terms of things about the Noah story that just don't work.  But wait, there's more...

40 days later, God calls off the apocalypse and allows Noah's god fearing and righteous family to depart the Ark with all the animals and begin to repopulate the Earth.  Then we get the whole story of Ham, finding Noah drunk and naked (and Noah's the most righteous man alive, mind you) and getting Shem and Japhet to have a look, whereupon Japhet proves to be the only one with any decency, and stops the nonsense, and Ham and Canaan are punished by becoming slaves.  This becomes the basis for all future racism, as Ham was black, Shem was Asiatic, and Japhet was white.  Add to this, the unedited earlier version where Ham actually castrated the sleeping  Noah.  Plus there is the non-canon version where Noah got rid of his old wife and took on a younger woman, which was probably a good thing as Noah was previously married to his cousin, and inbreeding was already a problem with the reduced population.

Oh, and we know from later works that the Nephilim weren't all destroyed by the Flood either as there was s second wave of Nephilim soon after the Flood... 10/10  perfect plan God.

You have to wonder how anyone can read this and still believe that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, and this crappy nonsense is the best He could come up with.  I mean, He could literally have just blown up the Nephilim and their offending angel and human parents with thunderbolts, but instead he needs to murder everything on Earth and still not kill all the Nephilim.

So there you have it, Mass extinction, genocide, castration, inbreeding, drunkenness, the religious-ideological foundations of racism, and ultimate proof that God is an incompetent nincompoop. Hooray for Noah.

Thoughts?  Questions?  What is your worst Bible story?

 

None. The Bible is a collection of religious texts spanning a millennium, with roots going back at least two millennia more. It's depictions of deity vary and are hardly based on accurate empirical observation. They are faith-based, reflecting belief in tribal gods with the emphases on God being either on our side or total pi$$ed about and disappointed by our apparent infidelities. God's actions are portrayed as homocentric, irrational and completely human, totally consistent with what one might expect of ancient, preindustrial cultures. It is from these crude beginnings that modern monotheistic religions evolved, often with some of the old conceptions, more or less intact. It's curious how its evident irrationalities evoke equal and opposite irrational responses. 

Edited June 17 by Hammerclaw

[Rlyeh]

God also promised not to flood the world again because humans are inherently wicked.

[newbloodmoon]

I would have to say my worse bible story is when god and satan are just chilling and having a phallus measuring contest as god allowed the devil to torture Job just to prove his piety.

[Rlyeh]

1 minute ago, newbloodmoon said:

I would have to say my worse bible story is when god and satan are just chilling and having a phallus measuring contest as god allowed the devil to torture Job just to prove his piety.

Apologists defend the abuse by saying Job got a new family.  So if any of them have lost children, they can make it better by getting a new one.

[+Hammerclaw]

2 minutes ago, newbloodmoon said:

I would have to say my worse bible story is when god and satan are just chilling and having a phallus measuring contest as god allowed the devil to torture Job just to prove his piety.

A morality tale, noting the unfairness of the universe and the triumph of faith over adversity.  

[Piney]

1 hour ago, Essan said:

Correctly speaking, a very large wooden box.   Not a boat.  

Which further proves the point!

A reed raft was the first one.

32 minutes ago, newbloodmoon said:

I would have to say my worse bible story is when god and satan are just chilling and having a phallus measuring contest as god allowed the devil to torture Job just to prove his piety.

Samael was still a member of El Shaddai's court and a Angel whose job was to tempt people and destroy **** then. He was made into Satan by the Christians.

[Alchopwn]

On 6/17/2023 at 9:30 PM, Hammerclaw said:

None. The Bible is a collection of religious texts spanning a millennium, with roots going back at least two millennia more. It's depictions of deity vary and are hardly based on accurate empirical observation. They are faith-based, reflecting belief in tribal gods with the emphases on God being either on our side or total pi$$ed about and disappointed by our apparent infidelities. God's actions are portrayed as homocentric, irrational and completely human, totally consistent with what one might expect of ancient, preindustrial cultures. It is from these crude beginnings that modern monotheistic religions evolved, often with some of the old conceptions, more or less intact. It's curious how its evident irrationalities evoke equal and opposite irrational responses. 

What puzzles me the most is that these obviously primitive origins and clearly ridiculously primitive ideas of what an all powerful deity is like should encourage a sensible modern person to reject the whole of these religions as completely absurd, and yet they still cling to them like a life-preserver (made of lead).

[Piney]

7 minutes ago, Alchopwn said:

What puzzles me the most is that these obviously primitive origins and clearly ridiculously primitive ideas of what an all powerful deity is like should encourage a sensible modern person to reject the whole of these religions as completely absurd, and yet they still cling to them like a life-preserver (made of lead).

Why would a perfect being be vengeful and have anger issues? 

And from somebody who was brought up in a religion based on the natural cycle the whole concept of original sin is backwards and barbaric. 

[Alchopwn]

18 hours ago, Piney said:

And from somebody who was brought up in a religion based on the natural cycle the whole concept of original sin is backwards and barbaric. 

Honestly I think I could do an hour long stand-up comedy routine entirely devoted to the theology of Original Sin.

[Sojo]

I don't know about it being the "worst" teaching in the bible, but I do believe the concept is one that is referred to in metaphor in several places throughout the bible.

Whether the story is actual or metaphor, the idea presented is that there is some kind of "deliverance" of people prior to "God's" judgement.

Many people like to refer to these incidents as being metaphor for a pattern used by God and for the rapture of the church just prior to the judgment of God on the earth. Others might think it to be metaphor for some kind of genetic preservation technique (meaning the ark itself).

I think this concept is shown in various places in the bible. I'm giving a link that starts off about Lot but also includes the deliverance of Noah and his family to show the repeating of the concept in different stories/occasions.

Daniel 12:1 also presents the idea:

"And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book."

Here's the link: https://www.oxfordbiblechurch.co.uk/index.php/books/sodom-and-gomorrah/628-chapter-6-lot-and-the-rapture

I'm not advocating a position for or against whether the story is true, I Just thought I'd throw this in for folks to consider.

Sojo

[Crikey]

On 6/17/2023 at 10:26 AM, Alchopwn said:

The Christian Bible is a very flawed document..

Huh? One minute atheists are saying the bible's been edited, censored and tidied up over the centuries to make it look good, then the next minute they're saying it's still flawed!

Wish they'd make up their minds..;)

[+Desertrat56]

5 hours ago, Sojo said:

I don't know about it being the "worst" teaching in the bible, but I do believe the concept is one that is referred to in metaphor in several places throughout the bible.

Whether the story is actual or metaphor, the idea presented is that there is some kind of "deliverance" of people prior to "God's" judgement.

Many people like to refer to these incidents as being metaphor for a pattern used by God and for the rapture of the church just prior to the judgment of God on the earth. Others might think it to be metaphor for some kind of genetic preservation technique (meaning the ark itself).

I think this concept is shown in various places in the bible. I'm giving a link that starts off about Lot but also includes the deliverance of Noah and his family to show the repeating of the concept in different stories/occasions.

Daniel 12:1 also presents the idea:

"And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book."

Here's the link: https://www.oxfordbiblechurch.co.uk/index.php/books/sodom-and-gomorrah/628-chapter-6-lot-and-the-rapture

I'm not advocating a position for or against whether the story is true, I Just thought I'd throw this in for folks to consider.

Sojo

Yeah that justifies everything in the bible doesn't it.  If it is absurd it is metaphor.    But that doesn't really teach anything useful.

[+Desertrat56]

57 minutes ago, Crikey said:

Huh? One minute atheists are saying the bible's been edited, censored and tidied up over the centuries to make it look good, 

 

Those are the ones who have never read it in the first place.   They don't all say that.  And not believing in the christian god does not equate to athiest if you are going to nit pick.

Edited June 20 by Desertrat56

[+Desertrat56]

There used to be a video on Youtube by a 12 year old girl who went with her father to The Ark Experience in Kentucky and pointed out all the "anti-science" in that place.   I can't find the video now.

[eight bits]

1 hour ago, Crikey said:

Huh? One minute atheists are saying the bible's been edited, censored and tidied up over the centuries to make it look good, then the next minute they're saying it's still flawed!

Wish they'd make up their minds..;)

There aren't many atheists in the "guild" (as the academics who study the Bible professionally call themselves), but there is solid consensus in the guild that a great deal of biblical editing, censorship, and tidying up has really happened. I don't think cosmetic improvement was much of a factor.

Some of the changes apparently are just copying mistakes. But there are deliberate changes, too. Those often seem to be related to theological agendas, or disputes about how the religions (Judaism or Christianity) ought to be run. (For example, we wouldn't want Christian women teaching men, now would we? Let's forge a letter from Paul which forbids that. Whew. Problem solved.)

[+Desertrat56]

8 minutes ago, eight bits said:

There aren't many atheists in the "guild" (as the academics who study the Bible professionally call themselves), but there is solid consensus in the guild that a great deal of biblical editing, censorship, and tidying up has really happened. I don't think cosmetic improvement was much of a factor.

Some of the changes apparently are just copying mistakes. But there are deliberate changes, too. Those often seem to be related to theological agendas, or disputes about how the religions (Judaism or Christianity) ought to be run. (For example, we wouldn't want Christian women teaching men, now would we? Let's forge a letter from Paul which forbids that. Whew. Problem solved.)

Yeah, the Roman Pau/Saul who never existed in the first place.      Of course he would be the one to preach misogyny,  typical roman ideology.   

Edited June 20 by Desertrat56

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

On 6/19/2023 at 10:03 PM, Piney said:

Why would a perfect being be vengeful and have anger issues? 

And from somebody who was brought up in a religion based on the natural cycle the whole concept of original sin is backwards and barbaric. 

Arguably, an omniscient being -one that is all things - would also be wrathful and proud, vengeful and so forth. 

[Tatetopa]

I got in trouble in about 7th grade by asking the Sunday school teacher who Cain and Able married.  But enough of that.

After studying some history in college, I realized how similar the concept of god as Lord or King and Heaven as a Babylonian city with walls and gates  seem to be inspired by the Babylonian civilization itself, which must have been a wonder to wandering herdsmen.

 

 

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

Noah’s flood is an odd inclusion on the Bible - mostly because it was the last “slate cleaning” done by the Lord in Jewish tradition of roughly 40*. Its presence is basically there as a threat “obey God, don’t be ‘wicked’ (whatever we decide is wicked this week) OR ELSE!”. It’s a control mechanism (just like Original Sin and Hellfire).

 

 

 

 

 

 

*My theory is is “40” is just a placeholder word for “any big number” like how in Watership Down “five” means any number we can’t b3 bothered to count to/bigger than we have easy concept for.

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

4 minutes ago, Tatetopa said:

I got in trouble in about 7th grade by asking the Sunday school teacher who Cain and Able married.  But enough of that.

After studying some history in college, I realized how similar the concept of god as Lord or King and Heaven as a Babylonian city with walls and gates  seem to be inspired by the Babylonian civilization itself, which must have been a wonder to wandering herdsmen.

 

 

I had a Bible thrown at me by a nun at school (I was a state school kid) because I asked “too many questions” in RE. 
I was threatened “stop asking questions, or else” so I said “Why?”

Bibles make a fascinating sound when thrown, BTW. 

[+Desertrat56]

17 minutes ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

I had a Bible thrown at me by a nun at school (I was a state school kid) because I asked “too many questions” in RE. 
I was threatened “stop asking questions, or else” so I said “Why?”

Bibles make a fascinating sound when thrown, BTW. 

I was screamed at by a baptist sunday school teacher and called a blasphemer because I could read.

[Hankenhunter]

3 hours ago, Desertrat56 said:

I was screamed at by a baptist sunday school teacher and called a blasphemer because I could read.

Yeah, I remember getting the stink eye for critical questions asked during Sunday School. They don't like it when you actually think for yourself. That was the beginning of the end of my religious education. My mother dropped out around the same time I did.

Edited June 21 by Hankenhunter