Flood Stories

I always find it amazing to see Creationists proclaim the Flood story as a "truth" that helps proves creationism. I find this amazing because the Biblical Flood story is taken from the Gilgamesh story of the flood. Which predates the Cananites by more than 500 years. In fact there are 4 known tablets that are KNOWN to be at least 500-600 years OLDER than any known Old Testimant writings that tell an almost identical story.The simple fact of the matter is that the Flood story, I would say all of the bible for that matter, is nothing more than a story early Jews used to explain THEIR god, and how they fit into the world. It is not meant to be a historical retelling of an actual worldwide event. In fact there is no evidence of any such even ever taking place. The best they can come up with is Mt. Ararat, when the bible itself doesnt say that is where the Arc ended up... rather being purposly vauge with "the mountains of Ar'arat"The only flood evidence we have is at the Black Sea, however there is no evidence that the survivors of that flood fled to the mesopatanian areas where the tablets, and the old testament came from. The flood story is just that a story, not a history lesson.

Yes, that program on TLC was very interesting. And seemed quite unbiased. Which is the kind of information I like to see.There is no geologic evidence of any worldwide flood event. However if you take into consideration that to the early civilizations the "world" consisted of the places they knew about I am sure there were localized floods all the time. As to the argument that the story of Gilgamesh and the other stories were taken from the early Jews that would be fine except that there is no historical or archeoligal evidence of that. The earliest known Old Testament was written at the earliest 500 years after these tablets were created. That is fact, not conjecture. You can have the opinion that they infact borrowed and wrote down the story after hearing it from cananites, but that opinion is just that opinion. I will have to go with what has been shown to be true rather than hold out on a possible truth. A truth that is needed to validate an opinion on the purpose of the Bible.I mentioned Mt. Ararat because that is the supposed resting place of the Arc. The place that holds the "evidence" of the validity of the story as told by the Bible. In fact the bible never states that is where it is, it is purposly vauge. Why I would ask is that? If they were recording literal history would they not want to be as exact as possible? That is what I was alluding to. Basically what I have seen from creationists is an attempt to validate the historical nature of the bible using the bible as a reference. I can make my own bible and accomplish the same feat and you would be powerless to refute my claims. The circular reasoning I have witnessed is astonishing. The bible is right because the bible says its right, that is the crux of the arguments I have seen. I HAVE seen the supposed use of scientific reasoning to disprove evolution however. Yet whenever that same logic is applied to the bible it doesn't seem to fly. Odd.

First let me start of by stating I am not a geologist, nor a scientist of any kind. I am a reasonable person open to the idea of creationism, but skeptical. The things I've mentioned, ie tablets and archeoligcal evidence, are dated using whatever dating method is accepted, based on that there has been nothing to substantiate some claims. Now I think I might have come to some realization, apparantly there is more than one creationist camp. I was unaware of such a division, thinking that there was simply creationists.. A different forum I've been told about has based all its arguments on the bible, ending today with the argument that the bible is right because the author says it is. I laughed out loud. This forum is the exact opposite in its dealings it now appears.TC I appologize for grouping you with the "crackpots" I have been dealing with.Unfortunatly I do not have the time to research the facts that are already accepted to be truth or close enough to truth. All I can do is use these "facts" as support against creationism until a creationists puts forth a theory that has enough evidence to support it so that I can be convinced. It is not my job to prove evolution, old earth, or the validity of the bible as a moral teaching but not a history book. It is your job to convince me they are wrong, to show me the error in the already presented evidence, to inform me of why the creationist view is correct. Perhaps I will have to wait until your theory is more fleshed out, gathered more of your own evidence. However as to date I have not seen anything to convince me that creationists are anything more than people desperate to explain their purpose in the universe. People who's base argument for wanting to validate creationism is to give them a purpose, God made me for a reason, my existance is not a chance event.