As I said yesterday, when skeptics ask me
I have yet to run into a non-Christian skeptic whose problem with the flood story is that God flooded the world. I have met Christians who struggle with it though. Generally their problem comes from their Pelagianism.
Y’see, Pelagius of Britain believed humans are inherently good. ’Cause we were created good, y’know.
Wouldn’t that be nice. But ’tain’t so. Like I said, we’re inherently selfish and corrupt. We could have the best influences ever—like Judas Iscariot had Jesus of Nazareth—yet still figure we know best, rebel, betray, and die in despair and nihilism. It’s not that God doesn’t wanna save everyone;
So when Pelagians look at the people of Noah’s day, their issue is they don’t actually believe God when he declared humanity, except for Noah, was ruined.
Genesis 6.11-13 KWL - 11 To God’s face, the land was ruined. The land was full of violence.
- 12 God saw the land. Look, ruin!—all flesh ruined its way in the land.
- 13 God told Noah, “To my face, the end of all flesh is coming:
- They fill the land with violence before them. Look, the land is ruined!”
No, they insist, it wasn’t. A loving God could’ve unruined it… in some other way than flooding it.
To their minds, a loving God should’ve found another alternative than judgment and punishment. The problem—the dirty little secret of universalism—is the only way God could fix ’em without punishing them is to reprogram them. If rebellion is their freewill decision, all God needs to do is abolish their free will, and force them to love him. In so doing, God’s gonna destroy them—you know, like hell will. Only difference is, it’ll look like God never actually destroyed anything—but of course he did, just like a computer with a swapped-out hard drive. Looks the same; isn’t at all.
Y’know, replacing humans with Stepford humans