The following is a guest post by OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Hi, kids! As promised yesterday, here now is the final session of this week’s special set of Monday School classes dealing with Genesis chapters 6 through 8. Have fun! And remember: Talking amongst yourselves and passing notes is not merely allowed – it’s encouraged!

16) Water, water everywhere – but not a drop of logic

Where did all the water for the Flood come from? How did it cover the highest mountains in a mere 40 days (as Gen. 7:19-20 says it did)? Where did it all go after “every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground” (Gen. 7:23)?

“The book of Genesis says of the Flood that ‘… all the high hills that were under the whole of heaven were covered…’ Taken literally, this seems to indicate that there were 10,000 to 20,000 feet of water on the surface of the earth, equivalent to more than half a billion cubic miles of liquid! Since, according to biblical accounts, it rained for forty days and forty nights, or for only 960 hours, the rain must have fallen at a rate of at least fifteen feet per hour, certainly enough to sink any aircraft carrier, much less an ark with thousands of animals on board.” – John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy, (Collins Publishers, 1988), p. 13.

17) How long was the ark afloat? If you think you know for sure, you haven’t read the Bible. It gives two very different answers.

“There are two versions of Noah’s flood in Genesis, one by the Yahwist and one by the Priestly author…. Among the more obvious disagreements between the two versions is that, in the Yahwist’s flood story, the ground was dry fifty-four days after the cessation of the rain, whereas the Priestly version kept Noah afloat for several more months.” – William Harwood, Mythology’s Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus, (Prometheus Books, 1992), p. 131-132.

18) An impotent God?

If God really sent the Flood to rid the earth of evil as Gen. 6 says He did, He failed. If there’s been any change for the better since the Flood, the Bible sure doesn’t record it. It seems God didn’t merely use a poor, overly complicated means to achieve His stated goal – He used an utterly ineffective one. But God, by definition, is perfect and all-powerful. The God of the Bible, therefore, is once again revealed to be a logical impossibility.

19) An insane God?

According to the Bible, God found man to be utterly evil and so sent the Flood to destroy him (Gen. 6:5-7). After the Flood, God promises never again to smite all life not because man has become good or has improved in the least but precisely because man is evil (Gen. 8:21). A situation which throws God into a murderous rage one time elicits God’s understanding and pardon another time. Such extreme, unpredictable capriciousness would probably merit hospitalization in a human. To attribute such behavior to a “perfect” being is absurd.

20) Noah’s God doesn’t keep His promises

At the end of the Flood story, God makes two promises which the Bible itself indicates He didn’t keep. A) “Neither will I again smite any more every living thing, as I have done.” (Gen. 8:21) Yet later we find this: “I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord. I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heavens, and the fishes of the sea….” (Zep. 1:2-3) B) “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest… shall not cease.” (Gen. 8:22) Really? Then how do we explain “And the famine was over all the face of the earth…” (Gen. 41:56) and “For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest” (Gen. 45:6)?

21) The problem of evolution

Those fundamentalists and Bible literalists who claim that the story of Noah and the Flood happened exactly as described in Genesis seem to be among the harshest critics of the scientific theory of evolution. For them, these questions: If we are all descended from a mere 8 people who lived less than 5000 years ago, why are we so varied a species? Why are there so many races and ethnic groups? Although you say you don’t believe in evolution, it seems you must actually believe in a rate of genetic drift, mutation, and change much faster than that which evolutionists themselves believe occurred. Explain.

22) The problem of cultural diversity

Just as the Bible’s Flood tale cannot plausibly account for human genetic diversity, neither can it account for human cultural diversity. The great civilizations of China, India, Africa, and the Americas simply did not spring from 8 people who got off a boat in the Middle East around 2400 B.C.

*

That’s all for now. Anyone looking for a bit of extra-credit can leave a note explaining how God prevented light and water from interacting to form rainbows before He created them as a sign of His promise to never send another Flood. Law students might take turns attempting to defend God from the charge that the innumerable smaller floods He’s sent since Noah’s time add up to a major breach of contract. Creative writing majors might want to attempt to reconcile Genesis with Neanderthal man and all the other findings of paleontologists.

And if anyone can show that Chinese civilization is traceable back to a boat on a mountain in Turkey, be sure to let me know. You’ll not only get a Nobel Prize or two – you’ll get an automatic “A” from me!