A Skeptic Reads the Bible 6: God Destroys the World, Part 1

The "part 1" in the title is actually intended sarcastically. I won't be writing multiple articles on the so-called Great Flood. Instead, I wanted to point out that this is merely the first time that God gets very upset and threatens to wipe out humanity (and the first and only time in the Bible that he actually follows through on this threat). God is a God of rage.

Thanks to the modern addition of chapters, my copy of Genesis makes the flood look related to the strange story of the so-called "Nephilim" (and perhaps it is related). The Nephilim are the sort of thing that gives contemporary Christian theology fits, but, again, fits very well into what I've described as the myth-based context of Genesis. The Nephilim, the Bible solemnly explains, were the offspring of angels who descended to earth and married human women. The word means "giant" and they seem to have been regarded as heroes (which is what you'd expect of immortal demigods, I imagine). Why such an overtly polytheistic holdout would be left in by the Hebrew authors of Genesis, I have no idea, but there it is.

The Ark cannot be historically accurate - By the way, this is another favourite target of skeptics like myself, who have become unfortunately obsessed with the petty task of "disproving" the Bible. Not that it's hard to do in this case. There is, of course, no real physical evidence for anything like a catastrophic global flood. The Bible does not attempt to explain how all of the plant species would have survived during the flood -- they weren't brought onto the ark (at least not in seed form), and they all would have drowned in salt water.

The authors also don't seem to have realized that freshwater and saltwater fish species can't actually live in each other's habitats, and so Genesis doesn't attempt to explain how all of our freshwater fish could have survived, either. All of these would have to have died, though: the flood waters covered the entire Earth for five months, and Noah's family had to live on the ark for an entire year.

Speaking of the Ark, let's consider what must have been happening on board this floating zoo. It's not really all that large (Genesis helpfully supplies engineering specifications, which make it a small cargo ship by today's standards), yet God told Noah to take onboard at least two of "all living creatures" (and seven for birds and "clean" animals). It doesn't mention how insects were saved, but presumably they went onboard as well. And he would have needed cages, of course, to keep the lions from eating the sheep. And he would have needed fodder for the sheep. And he would have needed extra sheep to feed the lions, while they were being prevented from eating the protected antelope. And so on, and so forth.

In other words, there wasn't enough room on the Ark. Even if somehow Noah could have squeezed several million animals onto the boat, he would have had to put food supplies on board for them all, too. And somehow arranged for regular feedings for them all, as well. The logistical requirements of this divine experiment in zookeeping beggar belief. So it's as easy to believe this story is historically true as it is to believe in the tooth fairy.

God and Mass Murder - I've always been a little uncomfortable at our ability to turn the story of Noah and the Ark into one of the defining children's stories of the Christian tradition (along with Jesus in the manger). This is actually an appallingly violent story. God deliberately murders all but eight human beings, and almost all of the plants and animals on Earth. He accomplishes this task probably more thoroughly than even a nuclear war could today, so on a proportionate basis, it would be fair to say that God is the greatest mass killer in history. The collective pain and terror experienced by millions of drowning men, women and children is conveniently omitted from the children's stories.

Any squeamishness he had about actually punishing Adam and Eve, or Cain, earlier on, is clearly gone now. He's had it with the pesky humans. God, according to the Bible, decides that "every inclination of the thoughts of [man's] heart was only evil all the time," and decided on this basis to "wipe mankind... from the face of the earth." Yipes! Inexplicably, God still liked one man, Noah, and decides to spare his family. This reasoning is odd because it again suggests that God is making things up as he goes: God spares Noah because he doesn't really find him all that bad, not because at some point in his frantic scheming he realized he'd need to keep at least one family alive or his experiment would fail.

There's another part of this which points to the fact that whoever wrote Genesis really didn't think of God as perfect and all-knowing: the Flood doesn't work. "Never again will I curse the ground of man," God vows somewhat regretfully in Genesis 6, "and never again will I destroy all living creatures." But this isn't because mankind has improved: even after the Flood, God admits, "every inclination of [man's] heart is evil." So he hasn't actually succeeded in abolishing evil: he's just managed to catastrophically downsize the human population.

An all-knowing God would have known this would be the result in advance, and possibly would have stayed his hand. More to the point, though, what this really seems to imply is a deity without a plan. God sees that humans are evil, is upset that his experiment in creation isn't working out the way he intended, so he has a temper tantrum and stamps them out. Afterward, he calms down a little and realizes that all of his rage couldn't change the fact that the survivors are still evil.

He does try, though. God invents a new moral code for humanity after the flood, perhaps reasoning that his chief mistake the first time around was not spelling out in advance what was right and wrong. This time, they are ordered to "be fruitful and multiply," to claim dominion over all of the animals and plants of the earth, and not to "shed the blood" of other men. He closes with a promise of his own: that he will never flood the earth again. (This is an interesting caveat: God doesn't promise not to wipe out humans again, he just promises not to wipe them out with a flood. So I guess the option of wiping us out with fire is still open to him.)

Notice, again, the surprisingly limited mind of God here. As part of the covenant with Noah, God supposedly invents the rainbow, which he displays in the sky after every rainfall. You'd think the explanation for this would be a sign to humanity of God's promise to them - but it isn't. Instead, God explains that the rainbow is actually a reminder for himself: "whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant." In other words, the next time he's about to destroy the Earth, he'll see the rainbow and remember that he promised not to.

A God with Alzheimer's is a frightening prospect, indeed.

The "A Skeptic Reads the Bible" series is written by Andrew Vogt and published on AssociatedContent.com. Feel free to comment on this page or to keep reading at these links:

"Genealogies Galore" (Genesis 5)

"God Exiles Cain" (Genesis 4)

"Eve Gets the Short End of the Stick" (Genesis 2-4)

Check out the index of all "Skeptic Reads" columns.