Support for belief in Noah's flood, not evidence.

How barbarous and absurd.

Mind you, at the end of the c.18th the British still used the death penalty for 200 offences: https://www.nationaljusticemuseum.org.uk/museum/news/what-was-the-bloody-code
So maybe it was not quite as egregious by the standards of those days as one might think, looking at it from today's perspective.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

But isn't that basically what people are saying? Nobody takes the book literally, yet they still "believe" Jesus was the "son of God" and "belief in him" is the prerequisite for "salvation".

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Maybe on this forum, but all the Christians I know aren't interested in conversations we have in here, they all know Jesus existed, subjectively.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

On that point of was Jesus really a son of a god.

Apparently the last man to be burnt to death in England for heresy did so because he didn’t believe Jesus was really a son of a god.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Wightman

I thought they burnt witches because they were seen to be in league with the devil, so that would make it a religious matter, and the last witch to be burnt in the British isles was in 1727.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Horne

 

Yeah. And to an extent, to co-opt the critiques of the Cathars, not unlike the 16th-17th century Counter-Reformation. Though there's an argument to be made that the Dominicans (and related groups) were genuine reform movements that were in turn co-opted by the central ecclesiarchy.

The Dominicans and other mendicant orders emerged in part from a movement against the established monastic orders, the Benedictines mainly but also the Cistercians, who-- by the High Middle Ages-- had become just another kind of feudal overlord. Monasteries and abbeys owned a lot of property, held serfs to work the land (ostensibly so the monks could focus on contemplative life), and the heads of monasteries and abbeys were as powerful as princes. There was a genuine wellspring of popular opposition to this, presaging a movement of popular piety in the Late Middle Ages, which sometimes included opposition to the temporal power of the Pope. In some cases, it manifested as a complete break from the Church, like with Catharism or the Waldensians; in other cases, it manifested as an attempt to reform it from the inside, like the Dominicans and Franciscans.

But because the latter orders of friars stayed within the Church hierarchy, and relied on Papal support to get off the ground, they were captured by the same hierarchy that they ostensibly opposed. It was great public relations for the Pope, they could look like they were on the side of the popular movement against monastic indulgence, while not having to actually do much about it and lose the support of powerful monastic institutions, and instead could turn these zealous preachers against the groups that really threatened their power. The more centralized Papal inquisition that we think of only emerged with the appropriation of the mendicant orders in the 1220s, but even with that big step, the Pope never had full control over tackling heresy, and struggled with local bishops fighting jealously to keep their power. Even their big goal, a crusade against the Cathars, relied heavily on the French military as a blunt instrument.

And to extent, some of that comes down to technology. The slow nature of communication in that time period made even the most centralized actions pretty decentralized by today's standards, just as a matter of necessity.

 

An interesting commentary.

In fact we have seen, time and again in history, the capture of reform movements, either by the very institutions they were intended to reform, or by new temporal powers that see the opportunity. Christianity itself was a sort of reform movement within Judaism, after all. When it got to Rome, it was considered subversive and revolutionary, but eventually Constantine was converted and then it became the state religion of the empire. In England, Henry VIII, a Catholic (Fidei Defensor, no less), saw the opportunity to exploit the Reformation to break with Rome and make himself head of the church in England, so sort out his marriage problems and to expropriate the wealth of the monasteries. So the reformed religion became the state religion. And so on.

 

Oh yeah, most definitely. I took a bit of a circuitous way around to twofold points:
1. Religious motivations for major historical events pretty much always are smokescreens to complicated political situations. Even something as simple as the Pope defending his authority to appoint higher clergy had political, often strategic motivations, given that he ruled over a temporal state in Central Italy.

2. The Church and Pope gathering the kind of centralized power that popular imagination assumes it had in the Middle Ages was a slow, centuries-long, and largely incomplete process.

 

I would suggest that salvation the prerequisite for belief, but then Ive been employed with benefits before. A perk is a perk is a perk.

Anyway, we're also children of God according to the scriptures, so being the only begotten sounds a little far fetched to a guy like me. Of course, I borrow from the olt testament and view God as more than the creator of one son.

 

What does Noah's flood have to do with the biblical description of God's punishment of his children?

This is how I see Noah's flood . It has nothing to do with Noah!

IMO, the allegory contained in the bible refers to:

Chaos = the Father
Order = the Son
Logic = the Spirit

Abstract Logic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_logic#

There is really nothing logical about Noah's flood as told in the bible.
This is Ricky Gervais' take on Noah's flood.

(warning crude language)

 

I just stumbled across an article about the Zanclean flood 5.3 million years ago, that refilled the entire Mediterranean Sea - which had dried out after being cut off from the ocean.

The effects it left on the seabed indicates that it flooded the entire valley in as little as a few months to two years, rising at a rate of ten metres per day.

Yep. That would drown every living creature in the valley faster than they could escape.

Of course, there was no one around yet to write up the account...

 

And such events have happened countless times since the dawn of time. It's not unlikely that someone saw one, and over thousands of retellings, became the various flood myths we have today.

 

Yeah, I knew about the Black Sea Deluge - a much more plausible candidate for Noah's Flood. I didn't know about Ze Beeg One.

 

What does any of that have to do with Noah's Flood??

Wait, don't answer that.

Damn, I used W4uBot trigger words. Prepare for spamation.

 

You had to open the flood gates

 

There is no natural extinction event called Noah's Flood anywhere in scientific anals. Why are you discussing the merits of a mythology.

Support for belief in Noah's Flood on a scientific website? And you accuse me of going off-topic?
I'm sorry, but I cannot understand such assault on scientific principles.

 

Um. annals.

You'd have found scores of papers on the subject if you'd bothered to look.

Regardless, what gave you the idea here is a requirement here that all discussion be referenced in scientific annals? That would be kind of weird in, say, the Ethics subforum or the Free Thoughts subforum, don't you think?

Why are you questioning what others are allowed to discuss? Mythology and historical events are a perfectly valid topic of study.

Certainly.

This website supports discussion of many types. Theological research is certainly a valid field; there's an entire subforum dedicated to it.

Furthermore, "Off-topic" has nothing to do with forums of discussion and everything to do with hijacking a thread. The "topic" is summarized in the subject line of each thread. Your post. above, appears to be off-topic, as it has nothing to do with the thread title.

Yes, well, I won't fight you admitting that science is not your strong suit.
Nor, apparently, is how forums work.



This is making you look foolish and confused. Stop that. It's getting awkward.

 

The Black Sea Deluge hypothesis is the most commonly cited scientific explanation for the origin of the Noah story.

 

Oops, seems I pulled that out of my anals....

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

OK, I can agree with evidence of a Black Sea Deluge, but how does that support the record of a global extinction event as described in the bible?

Exactly where does the scientific support come in when the hypothesis itself negates the story of a global extinction event where 1 family was spared to collect ....... etc.....?

If I asked you if there was supporting evidence for the story of "immaculate conception" and you offer that Mary gave birth to Jesus the son of God, how does that support anything?

My point is that you cannot support a story using the story as your supporting evidence.
Is that not called circular reasoning?

 

He's obviously not claiming evidence that Noah's flood was a real global flood/extinction. Only an utter moron would think that. The point is to consider whether any real historical events may have given rise to legends such as the one in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the bible.

We've had threads on this before. There are several candidates, ranging from the seasonal inundations of the rivers of Mesopotamia, to the flooding of the the Black Sea or the rise in sea level after the Ice Age that progressively flooded what is now the Persian Gulf. The flooding of the Med itself would have been the biggest of these ancient flood events by far, but it took place too long ago for humanity to have witnessed it.

 

He is claiming that there may be supporting evidence for the belief that Noah's flood was a historical event as told in the bible. What other interpretation is there of Noah's flood? It was a local event?

Really? Is that the proposition made in the OP? Think of the implications.
This story is being interpreted by some 2 billion believers worldwide as truth of an intentionally god-caused global event to punish man's insubordination. And we are looking for supporting beliefs, but not evidence?
For what purpose?