Why read the Bible literally: take two

OK, I'll humor you.
The things that stand out for me are -
1) If I read correctly, this story suggests a bear of almost a 1000 feet high while standing...which would be fine, except, I haven't heard of any fossilised bears that big lol!
2) If the boys died at the top of the tower, who witnessed their story? What are his credentials?... unless the boys survived, but if so, why not say so? The author doesn't seem to be sure of that either.
4) If the author isn't even sure of the story, why should anyone else be?I think one of the problems with this story is, it stands alone, without any real historical context, making it hard to take seriously (giant bear aside lol) unlike the Biblical stories we have been talking about here. I could say more, but my time is short this weekend.

Are you saying that there weren't 200 Flood stories that had that kind of agreement??...all your post proved was there were more than 200 stories, that does not make my original point false.You say, "The reason I failed to mention it is that it is utterly false. (And also off-topic to this thread.)"I know otherwise, and can prove it but can't argue about it here, because, as you said, it is off topic.

Like I said, the author of the story obviously didn't take it that seriously...why should we?? I'm amazed you can't tell the difference. The fact is, all the points you mentioned were never understood by the Biblical writers as normal, everyday events...they viewed these things as acts of God. Unlike the story about the massive bear, which accepted it's existence as a matter of normal, everyday fact. That is one big difference between most myths and the Bible, one that you obviously have missed.

I understand your reluctance to accept a 950 year old man, assuming as you do the doctrine of uniformitarianism which assumes that the way things are now re. human age, was the way things were back in the day. Of course, this is not a Biblical assumption, but an evolutionary one. The Bible does not pretend that everything before Adam & Eve's sin and before the Flood was the same as it is now. Sin had a negative effect on the physical world, the Flood would have had a big impact on the climate.
Bottom line is, if you don't accept those two Biblical presuppositions, you are going to have a hard time with lots of other stuff in the Bible too. But they aren't a problem for me. All consistent with the whole story. That's one of the things that made me realise you really can't pick and choose where the Bible is concerned. It makes sense as a whole but as soon as you start taking bits out you don't like, the whole thing no longer makes sense.
See my last post re. the bear.

Actually I wonder if this Flood story stuff would be better discussed under 'Alternative Creations', (that thread already exists)? Or under a Flood thread? Any ideas, folks?

Message 246 was my message! No one answered my message 247.

Re. hospitals, in the pre-Christian Roman Empire, hospitals existed only for soldiers, gladiators, and slaves. Manual labourers and other poor indidviduals had no place of refuge. Men feared death and took little interest in the sick, but often drove them out of the house, and left them to their fate. The Romans most certainly did not elevate the common man lol.
Re. universities, in Greek times, these were only for the elite, the phenomenon of education for the masses has it's roots in Christianity.
Re. modern science, I found your remark rather amusing. Many ecologists, who are not Christians by their own admission, blame the ills of humankind on science, many say, in fact, that it is because of Christianity that we have science and that Christianity is to blame for the whole thing!!! Sounds to me like you need to expand your reading on that front!!
Re. Columbus, I'm sorry that you don't find your country a 'positive thing' in the world, but, you folks do have your faults (as we all do), I shudder to think what the world would be like without the US.
Re. the Crusades and the Inquisition, show me where the NT writers taught that the Holy Land had to be taken by force if lost to other peoples??? Show me where the NT writers suggested that anyone who disagreed with them should be stoned or burned...you see, in the Middle Ages, most people were Biblically illiterate, most did not have the Scriptures in their own languages, thanks to the RCC. That was how those events happened, not because The NT taught them, but because a corrupt church taught them to an illiterate people that didn't know better.
Re. slavery and Columbus, he is a good example of one who went with a cultural norm of the day without questioning it, though of course, he questioned many others in order to stumble across America. I guess nobody's perfect, we are all susceptible to cultural blindness from time to time. I have no doubt a century or two down the road, our descendants will look back at us and wonder why we accepted some things today, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

An Admin had posted a note on mine saying the Flood was being discussed elsewhere, told me to drop it. I thought I was in this thread at the time but I may be mistaken.

Yep, I was right about the Admin., see message 232.

My point was, the things I mentioned did not exist before Christ for everyone as they do today. The hospitals and universities as they exist today (i.e. for everyone) began in the Middle Ages in Christian societies, long after the Greek and Roman empires had disappeared. My point was not about medicine per se.

Well, you could say that about the last paragraph or two of message 232 (about how it 'could' or 'did' happen - my apologies), but the vast majority of my posting was about how the text wont allow for anything but a literal reading. I used the assumption that the Flood was local (and therefore not literally a Global flood) and tried to apply it to the text, but I don't see how you can make that work. I was going to go on about the specific words used in more detail to show how it would be even more difficult not to accept that the Flood account was intended to be read as literally global but that is when the Admin. told me to stop posting.

I think it's important in reading Genesis 1-11, that there is even more time covered in that period, than in the rest of the OT combined (excepting prophecy of the future of course).

I felt message 232 was my answer re. why take the Flood literally. It just doesn't make sense any other way. You see, you start with the a priori assumption that a global Flood didn't happen, you see all stories on this as being made up in some way...I, on the other hand, view it as an historical event, which other stories allude to, but which the Bible captures most accurately. We have different starting points, that's all.
I don't generally read fiction myself these days (except the Harry Potter books, just to see what all the fuss is about). I prefer non fiction (my last 2 non fiction books were Adventure Of English by Melvyn Bragg and Krakatoa by Simon Winchester). I did try to read the Master and Commander series of fiction books but there was too much ship jargon for my taste.

Well, I have the same view of the Flood as the NT writers did. Christ likens the unexpectedness of His Second Coming to the days before the Flood, when people went about life's normal activities totally unaware that judgment was imminent (Mt. 24).
Peter, in an extended analogy, portrays salvation by likening it to the Flood (1 Peter 3).
In Peter's second letter, he again refers to the Flood. Those who assume that 'everything goes on as it has since the beginning' of the world 'deliberately forget' that long ago God acted to judge the sins of humanity (2 Peter 3).
If the Flood didn't happen, then God didn't judge.
I think part of the problem here is perhaps some are assuming that all religions are essentially the same and that if you don't have to take one religion's writings literally, then you shouldn't take any of them literally. It seems to me though, that the more you study religions the more you realise how different they are. One thing that became clear to me is that Judaism and Christianity are historical religions. Of course, as I think I said earlier to someone else, literal does not mean that one does not recognise figures of speech etc.
Why do we need to interpret the Flood in any other way, in your view??