Why was there a need for a global flood?

I am sorry if you have problems with the way I have been posting until now. In the future please point out where I am going wrong before answering in a disparaging manner. I understand that we disagree on many things, but this does not mean that we have to be throwing insults. To avoid confusion, I think it is better if you paraphrase exactly what you think I am saying before you violently attack it. Otherwise, I am not sure if you are understanding what I am saying and arguing, or just throwing rebuttals without having fully understood my viewpoint. Here you are asking why G-d did not give an extremely strong warning such as widespread revelation, and then destroyed the world with the snap of a finger. You also do not think G-d gave a warning at all by telling Noah to build an ark. Now let me explain both of these issues. First of all, G-d was not required to give these sinners a warning altogether. In fact, G-d was going to destroy the entire world were it not for the righteousness of Noah (Genesis Chapter 6 verses 7 and 8). The reason why G-d did not just destroy the entire world right then and there was because He wanted to give some time for them to repent. Whether the warning was sufficient or not is moot because they did not even deserve a warning to begin with. The extra warning and time was given out of the mercy of G-d. Your next problem is that this warning was not sufficient, and if G-d wanted to save the world then he had other ways of doing it. You are recommending a revelation of G-d's presence and then a destruction of some sort. The problem with this proposal is that it goes against the whole reason for the worlds existence. G-d does not want robots or puppets. If He wanted these He could have created them. G-d wants humans that have the free will to chose good and therefore earn a reward. G-d has no use for puppets because they cannot earn a reward. If G-d will make a revelation and show his glory, the whole purpose of the world would not exist. A world of puppets is useless to G-d. If there was scientific evidence of G-d performing miracles all of the time, humans would not be able to have the proper amount of free will, and the world would not serve its purpose. Therefore, a revelation of G-d's glory is completely useless for the purpose of this world. Now if G-d wanted he could have destroyed the world in a miraculous manner having given the humans enough time to repent. However, where would Noah and his children have their free will from. Seeing the power of G-d, they would have no choice to do bad anymore, and there would be no purpose in the world anymore. However, we do see that one of Noah's sons did sin after the flood. He still had his free will even after seeing the great flood. This is because the great flood looked like any other flood. It happened in a natural manner, and even Noah and his sons had no evidence that G-d actually made the flood. In fact, according to the Torah and the Jewish tradition, the Tower built in Genesis Chapter 11 verses 1-9, was made (among other reasons) to prevent the sky from falling as it had in the time of the flood. They considered the flood to be nothing more than a natural occurrence that could be prevented with the right technology. It is obvious that the world still had its purpose because Noah and his sons still retained their own free will. The world was created with precise laws of physics that seem to always follow a pattern in order to hide G-d's presence and give everyone free will. This is why G-d did not use any method of destroying the world. If G-d had used such methods, Noah and his sons would have lost their free will, and the purpose of the entire world would no longer exist. In a way, the flood method was used for Noah and his sons, and not for the rest of the world. Now you are asking a very good question. You are basically asking why G-d would destroy the evil in the world at all. Why did G-d not just let the evil continue, after all, the humans should have free will? To answer this question you must first realize that the evil in this world pains G-d tremendously. G-d has created this world with the sole purpose of giving pleasure to people who chose good. Imagine how G-d would feel if these people disobey G-d and chose to not earn the reward. This is contrary to G-d's purpose in this world, and G-d gets pained by seeing such things happen in the world. Furthermore, evil is actually self destructive to the sole. G-d reached a point and said "no more." G-d decided to not let the humans continue to harm themselves with the evil, and instead G-d took the soles back from these humans. It is also possible that their soles had been completely tarnished with the evil that G-d knew that there was no return. This is because according to Judaism, the evil that a person does impacts his sole and creates a stronger desire to do more evil. When a certain point of evil is reached, it may not be possible for true free will to take place because the evil is just to strong. I will discuss the rest of your post in a later post. Please do not respond until I have given you a complete response to your post. You have some good questions and I would like to answer all of them.Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.

I think you are saying that free will always exists no matter what a persons surroundings are, and you consider it wrong for G-d to kill people because it necessarily removes their free will. First of all, free will does not always exist. A good way of showing this is to bring a person to the top of a very tall building and ask him if he has the free will to jump off. On first glance one would say that he has the free will to do anything, and nothing can stand in his way. However, if one thinks about it a little more he or she may realize that no sane individual really has the ability to jump off that buildings roof. This free will just does not exist, even though it is technically a possibility. This illustration is only to make the point a little clearer. However, according to the Jewish tradition, it is possible to reach a point where the free will is skewed to the evil side. This can happen when a person continue to chose evil. Eventually, he has effectively removed his free will to chose good. Free will is not always around, and in certain situations a person will remove it from himself. Now what happens when a person dies? Is G-d removing his or her free will? The answer is that G-d gives a person an amount of time with which to earn reward through choosing good. After this point, G-d will take the person to another world in order to give that person the reward. Free will is not meant to be there forever. Free will only exists when it is serving a purpose. Similarly, if a person chooses evil so much so that his free will has been skewed toward the evil, it is the person that has removed his or her own free will. When G-d removes these people from the world, He is not trampling there free will but rather just removing evil puppets from the world. G-d is actually doing them a service by taking away their ability to continue what would only be evil from then on. Edited by Open MInd, : No reason given.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner.

It sounds like you are saying that you consider G-d's actions to be immoral. According to Judaism, however, is not the end of anyone. It is considered a movement into another world. This may explain why G-d is not considered to be immoral with regard to removing people from this world. Of course this can be seen as immoral from the perspective of someone who thinks that a human is gone after the end of this life. But I hope you can see that G-d was not immoral at all from this perspective. Furthermore, it is G-d that has taught humanity morals according to Judaism. Therefore, it would be a paradox to say that G-d was acting immoral. You were right about the actual verse. Genesis Chapter 6 Verse 12 states that all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. This verse does not mean anything particularly to someone that is just reading the text. In fact, this verse does not really have any basic translation that would mean anything. The Jewish oral tradition gives the meaning of this verse to be exactly what I have told you. I suggest that you give this verse some thought to see exactly how this explanation makes perfect sense over here. I am sorry that there was a misunderstanding here, but I thought that you would have asked for an exact verse if that is what you wanted. The point of the flood was not to wipe out humanity but to remove the evildoers. G-d felt that the amount of evil in the world had reached a limit beyond which would not be considered acceptable. Also, Noah was having children, and G-d wanted to give his children a chance of having the right to choose good and not be overcome by the evil. Just as a side note, the Torah gives the ages of the people in that generation as being much more than 100 years. It would have taken a long time for humanity to disappear even if nobody would have children.Just as a side note, I did not say that nobody was having children; rather, I was trying to explain that it was very possible that nobody was having children, and if they were it was the minority of people and not the majority. Also, your comment about where babies come from does not really fit with anything that I was saying, and I would appreciate if you would not just through insults at me. If you read through my post carefully you will see that I said that the evildoers were engaging in ual pleasures as an act of selfishness. Only the evildoers were doing this. I did not mention that all ual pleasures are evil or immoral. You have to admit that you did not see me actually express this idea that you claim exists in my head. I will tell you what you have told me many times: Stop telling me what I think. It's insulting. I was only trying to point out that your idea of loving parents with children is contrary to the world that was portrayed in the time of the flood. I understand you did not say anything about loving parents. But you seem to be ignoring the horrible world that was portrayed at that time. I mention this to anyone that thinks they know what the Torah is saying. Do not think that you have the true story after reading a Christian translation called the old testament. This does not yield the truth about the Torah. In order to understand the Torah you must read the actual untranslated version of the Hebrew text, as well as the oral tradition that was meant to explain the seemingly cryptic written text.

You have not seen this thought explored here because it does not answer the opening post in any way. The question seems to be asking why G-d decided to use a global flood and did not instead just snap His fingers and make all the evildoers disappear. I don't see how what you are saying answers the question. Where do you see anyone being manipulated with the story of the global flood? According to the Torah, G-d promised "never" to bring such a flood again. The flood could easily be removed from the Torah and there would be no more or less power of manipulation. Also, how did this old tribal myth come about in the first place? All you have mentioned is that it is old. However, the age of the story does not give any explanation of how it originated. What other explanations are you referring to here? You have to realize that your explanation also has no evidence what so ever. You may be lacking evidence for the flood, but you are also lacking evidence of such a tribal myth.

This is my last response to your post 46. I am sorry if certain people are not true atheists according to your standards, but I can't start differentiating between all of the millions of different types of atheists you know. Unlike Judaism, atheism is not an organized religion and nobody sets the standards of who is a true atheist. However, I was speaking for some of the atheist that I have heard here even though you may not consider them to be real. Also, your opinions about rights seem to make little sense. Let us assume for the sake of this debate that G-d did create all of us and is also sustaining our lives every single instant of time. This is what the Jewish religion believes, and they are the ones who tell the story of the global flood. You think that G-d does not have a right to destroy his own creation. However, what is the meaning of a right. How are you to judge what rights G-d has or hasn't? In fact, what right do you have to assign rights? Who gives rights anyway? It is G-d. Therefore, how can you say that G-d would not have a right? If He did create the world than it would be He who would decide what rights things should or should not have. Think about an example of you and your inventions. If you would build a nice sand castle on the beach would you have a right to destroy it afterwards. Of course you would. You made the sand castle, how can someone else tell you what to do? Whether it is right or wrong to destroy evildoers is a different question, but regarding the rights of G-d, I think it is obvious that if you make something you have a right to destroy it. This is especially so if you are the one who created the concept of rights. You have constantly been stating that it is wrong for G-d to kill the infants because they did nothing wrong. I am only pointing out that this entire argument would be considered hypocrisy if you yourself do not think anything is wrong with abortion of innocent babies. I do not know what you opinion is, but I was mentioning this as a side note. Deal. I must also request that you explain what you think I am saying before every reply in order to avoid confusion. In this way I can see where your responses are coming from, and I can inform you where I think you are missing the point. I will cut down on the generalizations, but I need you to cooperate as well. Now you may feel free to respond to my posts.