I envy people who have Faith

[BlueBloodedBlue]

I don't but it must be a real comfort to believe in a higher power and have something that gives a meaning to everything.

That's it really.

You are of course quite twisted in tour reasoning. Should not the fact that the story of a great flood exists in ancient literature bear some fact that it might just have happened?

There is actually no proof that it was taken from there. That of course is an entire assumption on the part of those who peddle this. I have talked to researchers who think otherwise. You also appear to confuse the story of Christianity with that of Noah as if it were all one book! Please get your facts right!

There is actually no proof that it was taken from there.

Also there is no proof that it wasn't. You keep talking about these 'researchers' you have spoken to. Could you tell us some names, and the organisations they work for? Because a lot of 'research' goes on that isn't worthy of the name, especially in fundamentalist Christian 'Bible Colleges'. So I would like to see these ruled out as your sources.

Well first you tell me about your research please. I can assure you mine was not from what you call a ‘fundamentalist’ Bible college. Maybe yours was a tinpot American uni?

@MrsMcisaCt

Well said and I'm so sorry for what you went through, it's heartbreaking

You realise what you are saying is a complete assumption?

@Malie you are the one who is claiming there is lots of research, so you first, please. Also I have not claimed anything about the Flood stories, just that there is no evidence either way for a global flood. Plenty of evidence for regional floods though.

I am an alumnus of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, which is equivalent to UK RG universities. Nice try though.

You realise what you are saying is a complete assumption?
As is claiming the opposite.

@SnoozyLucy7 I believe the 'heroes of old, men of renown' described in the Bible refer to the stories of demigods and goddesses (children of gods and mortals), giants and great warriors in ancient Greek mythology and the like, which was inspired by the Nephilim.

The Bible also says they existed afterwards (after the flood) and it's my understanding that Ham, one of Noah's sons, settled in the land of Caanan. Ham was cursed for disrespecting his father. The sons of God (fallen angels) once again had children with women in this area. The ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians have myths relating to the Annunaki/Anakim (meaning 'princely offspring' or 'from heaven who came to earth').

When the Israelites scouted out the area where the Caananites were living they returned saying "We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them". Anak means tall (ie giant) and relates to the Annunaki or Anakim.

God forbids sexual relations with the Caananites and some nearby tribes and tells the Israelites to destroy the cities, leaving none alive. Again, as before the flood, the bloodline of the human race was contaminated and needed purification. In doing this, Satan (aka Lucifer - chief fallen angel) was trying to prevent his own downfall with the arrival of the Messiah (Jesus), who was to come from the tribe of Judah.

If you are a graduate you need to get your ducks in order and be able to distinguish between assumption and fact. Come on! What you said was assumption. There is absolutely no proof.

I think it definitely did happen but it had nothing to do with Christianity and/proof that your god exists. It most probably happened within the life span of the Sumer civilisation, during a period of heavy climates change, but obviously they had their own belief system that definitely was not monotheistic but rather polytheistic! So I am certain that it’s probable these floods happened but it had nothing to do with Christianity which borrowed heavily from this story and made it their own.

And my reasoning is not twisted. Please keep your insults to your self.

Who are these researchers that you keep talking about? Please post some links to their research! And please stop all patronising everyone. I am pretty familiar with the bible.

What you said was assumption.

Unlike you, I never claimed otherwise.
The Bible is not proof. There is no proof either way regarding the Flood or the existence of a god. The assimilation of deities and stories from other cultures is an established phenomenon, however. Many Christian churches are built on the holy sites of previous religions - if you visit York Minster, you can go down into the catacombs and see the remains of the Roman temple that was there before.

You go first because you are the only person who keeps talking about all these researchers and scientists, that you have supposedly talked to, that they have all this evidence, that supports everything that you believe.

Go on! Cite this research, post direct links to these scientific findings.

@Malie sorry, but you don't know the problem regarding abortion of babies with conditions incompatible with life. In your example, you describe comforting someone who has a dead baby. And that is a good thing to do. However, you would also force a woman to give birth to that baby and then watch it die, which is downright evil.

I have a friend who had an abortion at 26 weeks. This was a much wanted baby. Because of NHS delays in scans and diagnostics, she went past the 24 week limit before finding out that her baby would die the moment it was born. People like you would force people like her to carry to term. That is cruelty.

And lastly, as you very well know, banning abortion doesn't save babies. It kills women.

@SnoozyLucy7 I would strongly recommend not holding your breath. Malie's interactions on here remind me of the quote from Macbeth regarding life: It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

You go first because you are the only person who keeps talking about all these researchers and scientists, that you have supposedly talked to, that they have all this evidence, that supports everything that you believe.

Go on! Cite this research, post direct links to these scientific findings.

Yes please do share @Malie

You said you want to share the love of the god you believe in. That it's important to you that people understand why you believe and what positives your religion brings to your life.

If that's the case, you'll be happy to share some research or sources that show evidence.

Rather than doing the tit for tat 'if you can't I won't' thing you're currently doing.

You said you believed it's important for Christians, in your opinion, to share and support their beliefs.

So go ahead, the floor is yours...

Again your reasoning is purely assumption as is the assumption it was due to climate change. The fact that you say that ‘Christianity borrowed heavily from this story’ is totally wrong as Christianity was not around when the Jewish story of Noah was written. I apologise if I said your reasoning was twisted but I can’t see anywhere where I said it was. However you do need to get your facts right and distinguish facts from supposition. You also need to realise that the climate of the scholarship changes over the years and what one generation of scholars deduces as ‘fact’ the next generation kicks out! When you have lived as long as I have it is amusing to see what was once propagated as ‘the unanimous opinion of modern scholarship’ derided by a new generation of scholars.

@Malie I would hope that modern scholars in any field do not deride their predecessors' work - without that work, theirs would not have been possible. It's all about standing on the shoulders of giants.

Your argument that Christianity could not have co-opted the story of Noah is nonsense - this could easily have happened through oral tradition, and the Sumerians also had written records. Things do not have to be contemporaneous for co-opting to occur.

@Malie

However you do need to get your facts right and distinguish facts from supposition.

Please can you share some sources that show evidence that your claims are fact, so we can distinguish them from supposition?

As you're a Christian who deeply believes in the importance of spreading the word of the god you believe in as you believe that having faith can save souls, you'll want to do this surely?

Okay well it’s very interesting that when I was a student the unanimous opinion of so-called ‘scholarship’ was that the gospels were very light written in the second century AD and essentially made up. Then along came of all people John AT Robinson, one of the most notorious of liberal scholars, who argued that all that ‘scholarship’ was built on faulty research and the gospels were in fact early documents, with John’s gospel being the earliest. This was fascinating because Robinson was obviously in no way an evangelical Christian and did not take the evangelical position on the Bible. However it did pave the way for more serious study of the faults of dating theories and more recently Professor Bauckham has come up with a very interesting text on ‘Jesus and the eye witnesses’ with reference to Jewish thinking in the first century, making a very strong case that the gospels are eye witness accounts. The fact is we know more about the Second Temple period now than we have ever done and discoveries are confirming details of the New Testament.

as the story of Noah was written thousands of years before Christ how could Christianity have co-opted it?

Well first begin by showing that atheism is a fact please

It depends on what the research involves. I don’t think anyone would despise Newton research as he was right when it comes to large bodies. Yet when it comes to fast small moving bodies we have to go to Einstein and Schrodinger et al. But we do know that some of the dating of the gospels was completely wrong and built on the wrong assumptions based on a complete misunderstanding of first century Judaism.

@Malie

Well first begin by showing that atheism is a fact please

Eh? That's like me asking you to show that Christianity is 'a fact'. Of course it is a fact that atheism, like Christianity, exists.

Atheism is defined as:

noun
1 disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

It is a 'fact' that I do not believe in the existence of a god or gods. My atheism is therefore a fact.

I think what you're actually asking a bit clumsily is 'well first begin by showing me that god not existing is a fact please'.

Which means you're asking me to disprove the existence of something I do not believe exists.

It's nonsensical. The burden of proof is on a believer or any concept, not someone who believes the concept doesn't exist...