Would either of these things make you think it's impossible to take Genesis or Exodus literally?

I've been thinking about noah's flood a lot lately(yes) ever since a guy told me birds aren't real, and I don't see why this would make noah's flood impossible , did not noah's flood kill all the fallen creatures on earth? Were they not killed for distorting gods image?

The Great Flood would indirectly kill off all of the birds because all of their food would be under water.

We have a misunderstanding. I wasn't saying that birds being real or not has any implications for genesis or noah's flood, only that someone telling me this caused me to think about noah's flood. My point was that it seems neanderthals are easily accounted for in the bible, they all died in noah's flood because god didn't like them and they were corrupted and not in gods image.

The Neanderthals flew their planes above the flood and then helped repopulate the earth after the flood receded. That’s why Neanderthal DNA still survives in current human populations.

After adam and eve ate from the tree of knowledge humanity was corrupted by sins and impurities ever since then, including fornicating with demons, animals , neanderthals etc so it's not surprising noah's daughters had some neanderthal dna in them. This was a time when the whole world was corrupted , but god didn't want to give up on humanity because humans are in his own image, so he gave humanity a path for salvation.

Sorry, my mistake.

That makes sense.

As an aside, all people are made in God's image (i.e. all people have a body, soul and spirit). Fallen man still has a body, soul and spirit, although all three are corrupted by sin. Hence, the need for a perfect (i.e. sinless) Savior: Jesus Christ!

Now you're just being silly! It is a well known fact that Neanderthals hovered over the flood in their hot air balloons. Do your research before posting, buddy!

Thank you! it makes sense to me too.

Yeah Zeno

You are right that man is a reflection of God. The soul is also a reflection of God, so man is also a reflection of the soul.

This goes the other way too. Soul reflects man. God reflects man. Since man is fallen, both the soul and God are also fallen.

It is true that the living God in the Kingdom of Heaven is perfect, the living soul is perfect, and living man is perfect. However, these are just tiny seeds of perfection within the fallen.

This is the division. Divided man. Divided soul. Divided God. Which side would you say has the upper hand? The perfect or the fallen?

The flood story can be thought of as both the living God flipping the game board over in frustration as well as a wake-up call. Again, since man reflects God, in the story, the living God is not only frustrated with man, but he is frustrated with himself.

If man is being deceived, then God is being deceived. The flood is a wake-up call from God to man. The flood is a wake-up call from God to himself.

The underlined does not logically follow from the previous statements in the paragraph. Your syllogism commits the Fallacy of Undistributed Middle Term.

As above, the underlined does not logically follow from your premises.

My interpretation from a biblical viewpoint is that God made man in his image. But there isn't a vice versa; man did not make god in their image. I definitely could see why you think god sounds angry but I don't necessarily see it that way. He is not frustrated with himself or with man; he made humans in his own image for some greater purpose, but on the earth they degraded. Note this whole viewpoint is, of course, very speciesist. It implies humans are made in a divine image and thus on an entirely separate level of consciousness and purpose from other animals, including great apes and other hominids; ie there is something very special about h. sapiens in general.

But just because they are a degraded image that god wants to repair( as part of some divine plan) and humans were deceived by earthly things does not mean God was deceived. My interpretation is that although God has a final plan the details of how that plan unfolds are left to free will, ie he gave adam and eve a choice of whether or not
to eat from the tree of knowledge for example. He is all knowing so likely has different actions planned based on different human choices, which he purposely left up to them. We as humans are a fallen image because although our choices were predictable by god he left them up to us(free will) and we made terrible ungodly decisions, decisions where, were we god instead of just in gods image, we never would have made. Sin mostly means to miss the mark and we all missed the mark .

Those decisions were so lol bad that god flooded the earth to reverse the spiritual and physical rot. This isn't far from what you wrote really but where we disagree is that god was deceived. Or as implied by your post but not said explicitly humans affect the well being of God.

There never was a time when humanity was perfect and sinless. *People didn’t and don’t know how to reconcile that with the truth that man is made in the image of God and that the living God is perfect.

It is naive to believe that everything involving a fallen humanity is corruptible except for interpretations of stories, especially the Garden of Eden story. It’s time for adults to mature beyond this stage.

*It’s more accurate to say that the fallen God doesn’t know how to reconcile man’s fallen nature + man reflecting God. Anything other than the truth that God is fallen is acceptable to him. Even denying his existence is much preferred, which is why there are so many atheists and no theists telling the truth that the God in charge is fallen. As soon as someone has that realization, they become an atheist. Funny how that works.

The promise is the union of the Kingdom of Heaven with Earth, and the union of God with man. In the paradise of the Garden of Eden, why is God ever separate from man? There is no paradise where God is separate from man. Yet in the story that’s what is happening. That needs to be dealt with rather than swept under the rug.

How can you be both an atheist and believe that god has fallen?

I think the story, in both the hebrew and english is pretty clear. Adam and eve were sinless in a garden. A godly garden, a magic garden. Then when they ate fruit from the forbidden tree of knowledge they become corrupted and no longer were allowed to stay in the garden. To me that's kind of something you believe or you don't believe happened.

What makes the least sense to me is well, god kind of sort of was like a shepherd and the garden was only somewhat nice and adam and eve were close in power level and the snake couldn't really talk eve had schizophrenia etc etc.

It just strikes me, like the noah story, as something you believe happened or it didn't.

I would say that it’s more fundamental than believing that the stories happened or not. Like I detailed elsewhere on the forum, our interests go beyond historical facts.

We have an instinct for recognizing meaning and wisdom. That instinct connects to certain stories more than others.

What I would say is , as someone who is arguing from a protestant christian perspective it seems very important whether or not things literally happened. ie Jesus had to have been god, jesus had to have been resurrected, jesus believed in noah's flood so noah's flood must have literally happened etc.

The patterns of reality transcend the world and world history. The resurrection was real before it ever was revealed. It’s important to know that what is real and un-revealed is just as real as what is real and revealed.

Faith is not truly tested by believing in what has been revealed. It is tested by believing in what is real but not yet revealed.

could you give an example of something which is real but not yet revealed that you believe in?

That is impossible. We cannot speak of the un-revealed real.

The labor pains that happen right before new life is brought into the world is the analogy for bringing the un-revealed real into the world. We have to endure suffering in order to bring forth the un-revealed real.

In other words, we have to voluntarily suffer in order to bring forth the Kingdom of Heaven. We’re willing to suffer for that which we believe in. We are not willing to suffer for that which we do not believe in.