"speculative"
I agree. Interpretation, maybe over-intepretation, on my part I can bend with:
Matthew 24:36-39 says, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the
angels of heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will
the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were
eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah
entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so
also will the coming of the Son of Man be.”
Did he tell them and they didn't believe? He knew they turned from God so he
didn't tell them figuring it would fall on deaf ears? Dunno. Mungo only pawn
in game of life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKRma7PDW10
"how can you have 'criminals' when there has been no criminal law given to
define what "crime" even is?"
Gen.6:5--people mainly wicked, evil
Gen.6:11--earth corrupt and full of violence
My interpretation has it the reader is being told to bring to it at least a
basic sense of ethics, so those things would mean an extreme case of people
commonly overindulging the self at others' needless hurt and expense, unfair
regard or treatment, as by lying, stealing, murdering, etc., without forcing
specifics beyond basically that. As with another pre-flood Gen. story in which
Cain is punished for the violence of murdering Abel, this would have been
apparent by interpersonal ethics without messages from God or religious law
defining these things (also noted at Rom.2:14-15).
"Jesus made to the Flood (which he apparently believed in)"
Possibly, although the phrasing would be the same if he referred to an
aspect of an allegorical story, so I won't force the point.
God as bully never concerns me--it's a faith matter that He's even there.
I agree about wanting separation of church and state though I don't see the
Noah story as particularly hinging on that one way or the other. For bullying,
belief or non- belief as law of the land with punishments is more the problem,
like institutionalized 'centric intolerance--blech.
"the koran's flood account rings a bit more probable."
Maybe, but I don't think the points depend on how literally you can take
something like that except to a "fundamentalist literalist or nothing" forced
choice. What is more bothersome to me regarding Muhammad is though Mosaic law of
the land was over for Christians he, like a Roman emperor, didn't see the problem
in reinstating such a thing. I think he picked the wrong testament to emulate.
