ANSWERS: 8
  • No one knows and the danger lies in taking scripture literally. It’s difficult to even attempt to understand this action that God took. There are several accounts of flood stories long before the account of Noah. The Christian viewpoint (Hebrew) in the story of Noah teaches that the universe in which we live is moral, and that God punishes immorality. In the Babylonian story the destruction of the flood was the result of a disagreement among the gods. In Genesis it resulted from the moral corruption of human history. If humankind falls short of God's laws, there's a dreadful price to pay. Behind that moral message lies one of the world's greatest stories. ----------------------- "The word is not the message; the message lies behind the words. Consider the story of Noah's ark. A literal interpretation misses the relevance and profound moral symbolism of the story, of the world flood and its implications for humanity. The vital lesson of Noah's story is the human capacity for self-destruction and the ability of one person to save the world. In our time, we possess the capability to quickly destroy creation through our nuclear power or to slowly and significantly damage our planet through waste and pollution. Like Noah's generation, we are also able to corrupt the purpose of our existence through moral failure. When we come to think that we or our creations are invincible, we soon find ourselves in deep water, just like the people of Noah's generation. Even the most powerful of human beings must face their limits or be brought low. The tale of Noah's ark is about confronting both our power and our limitations as individuals and as society. The story is true not because it ever happened, but because it keeps on happening. The Noah story is true, because it describes a drama we all face, generation after generation. When we go beyond the literal sense of the text, we find meaning and relevance. When we can see our own struggles in the text, we can then take hold of the meaning of our sacred texts". Hidden Riches by J Square Humboldt ---------------------------- Clay tablets discovered in Iraq reveal a story that is remarkably similar to that of Noah in the Bible. Several epics tell of a Sumerian King who survived a massive flood in Mesopotamia. The story is supported by geological evidence for flooding in the area around 5,000 years ago. Could this story have provided the inspiration for the Jewish priests who wrote the Book of Genesis 2,000 years later? "When they first heard the story, how could they fail to recognise its moral power? If humankind falls short of God's laws there's a dreadful price to pay. Behind that moral message lies one of the world's greatest stories. By Jeremy Bowen
  • Animals die in nature all the time. The reason death came into the world at all for humans or animals was because of US (Romans 5:12). God has a system and reasons for it which I can only guess at. One guess would be that while reincarnation for humans is clearly not Biblical (Hebrews 9:27) I have wondered before if reincarnation for animals might be a possibility: Ecclesiastes 3:21 Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? Also, mankind's sin has affected the whole universe, and all creation yearns (Romans 8:22-23) for the day God will destroy this one and rebuild it anew, to be once again without the ravages of sin (save in that eternal place of torment where all death, sin, and hell will go, the Lake of Fire), a creation even better than the first. Animals were originally all created as vegetarians (Genesis 1:30). They may have started eating other animals after mankind's fall or after the flood, but mankind wasn't told to eat animals until after the flood (Genesis 9:3). My point is, animals may have been infected with sin as well due to mankind's fall which is why they harm each other and humans now and are a part of this fallen creation. Thus they may indeed be "evil" as your question asks. It also may be animals experience reincarnation and thus their flood destroyal was not a ceasing of existence. God is merciful in that even the most evil murderers will not be destroyed in that they cease to exist, but will still be allowed to continue existing, even though it be in a place of torment. Therefore, it may be God is simply a Creator who will not destroy any creation, including animals, concerning their existence. Since it seems there will be animals in heaven (Isaiah 11:6-9) it may be that God destroying the animals in the flood was actually freeing them from the pain of this life and they will simply renew their existence agai in Heaven. Again, I don't say these hypotheses to be anything but guessing on my part based on what God has given me to know of the Scriptures, more then one may be true, or none of them, I don't claim to know. I'm simply pointing out that there are many ways even according to our feeble human knowledge that we can guess at how God COULD be justified according to the Bible, and ultimately, we don't know, so why worry about it?
  • Clearly it was the largest mass slaughter of all time. Bigger than the Killing Fields of Cambodia, The Armenian Genocide, Hitler's holocaust, Stalin's murder of the Cossacks, indeed there wasn't even a greater killing imagined until Darth Vader blew up Alderan with the death star. This is the "vengeful god" that goes with bible thumping, fire and brimstone speech. How do you reconcile this with the "god is good" crowd? It it one and the same god? Or is one the ancient god of the Hebrews, while the other is the modern god-as-reconceived-as-son-of-man? That's the stuff of much debate, and little agreement.
  • He did kill only the evil.....Noah was the reason He didnt wipe out the whole of the human race.
  • Never mind the animals. How's about all those entire populations of children and innocent women he annihilated for no other good reason that he was pissed at the world and wanted to teach the ones that screwed up a lesson by killing others that had nothing to do with it in the first place?
  • Those animals beieved in Evolution!
  • He was lazy, I guess.
  • you need to ask god that question

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